Reading Lord of the Rings aloud: Yes, I sang all the songs
Like Frodo himself, I wasn't sure we were going to make it all the way to the end of our quest. But this week, my family crossed an important life threshold: every member has now heard J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (LotR) read aloud—and sung aloud—in its entirety. Five years ago, I read the series to my eldest daughter; this time, I read it for my wife and two younger children. It took a full year each time, reading...
about 3 hours ago
Qualcomm brings laptop-class CPU cores to phones with Snapdragon 8 Elite
Qualcomm has a new chip for flagship phones, and the best part is that it uses an improved version of the Oryon CPU architecture that the Snapdragon X Elite chips brought to Windows PCs earlier this year. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the follow-up to last year's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3—yet another change to the naming convention that Qualcomm uses for its high-end phone chips, though, as usual, the number 8 is still involved. The 8 Elite uses a "brand-new,...
about 4 hours ago
Tesla, Warner Bros. sued for using AI ripoff of iconic Blade Runner imagery
Elon Musk may have personally used AI to rip off a Blade Runner 2049 image for a Tesla cybercab event after producers rejected any association between their iconic sci-fi movie and Musk or any of his companies. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, lawyers for Alcon Entertainment—exclusive rightsholder of the 2017 Blade Runner 2049 movie—accused Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) of conspiring with Musk and Tesla to steal the image and infringe Alcon's copyright to benefit financially off the brand association. According to...
about 4 hours ago
Meta Quest 3S is a disappointing half-step to Carmack’s low-cost VR vision
It's been just over two years now since soon-to-depart CTO John Carmack told a Meta Connect audience about his vision for a super low-end VR headset that came in at $250 and 250 grams. "We're not building that headset today, but I keep trying," Carmack said at the time with some exasperation. On the pricing half of the equation, the recently released Quest 3S headset is nearly on target for Carmack's hopes and dreams. Meta's new $299 headset is a...
about 4 hours ago
Mercedes’ patented steering may finally make EVs exciting to drive
New cars really are better than they used to be. They last longer, they're more efficient, and they're safer for the occupants in a crash. But it's not entirely a one-way street. If the last time you bought a car was more than a decade ago, you're probably shocked at the cumulative effect of inflation since then. But even ignoring sticker shock, there's also the matter of cars (almost) all having lifeless steering. But a patent filed last year by...
about 7 hours ago
Dow Jones says Perplexity is “freeriding,” sues over copyright infringement
Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones and the New York Post have accused artificial intelligence start-up Perplexity of a “brazen scheme” to rip off their journalism for its AI-driven search engine in a lawsuit filed in New York on Monday. The publishers, both subsidiaries of News Corp, alleged the AI start-up, which is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in a funding round that will value it at $8 billion, was “engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying” of their...
about 9 hours ago
Hands-on with the 2024 iPad mini: Spot the differences
The iPad mini is a niche product, that much is clear. But for those who want an extra-small tablet, the launch of the sixth-generation iPad mini in 2021 was a red-letter day. For the first time in ages, the mini got close to the same kind of performance and features as its bigger brethren. Then it didn’t get any updates for a couple of years. It was still a good tablet, but it wasn’t positioned to take advantage of new...
about 9 hours ago
After seeing hundreds of launches, SpaceX’s rocket catch was a new thrill
BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—I've taken some time to process what happened on the mudflats of South Texas a little more than a week ago and relived the scene in my mind countless times. With each replay, it's still as astonishing as it was when I saw it on October 13, standing on an elevated platform less than 4 miles away. It was surreal watching SpaceX's enormous 20-story-tall Super Heavy rocket booster plummeting through the sky before being caught back at...
about 24 hours ago
T-Mobile, AT oppose unlocking rule, claim locked phones are good for users
T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier's network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. "If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers—not providers—who stand to lose the most," T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The proposed rule has support from consumer advocacy groups who say it will give...
1 day ago
Basecamp-maker 37Signals says its “cloud exit” will save it $10M over 5 years
37Signals is not a company that makes its policy or management decisions quietly. The productivity software company was an avowedly Mac-centric shop until Apple's move to kill home screen web apps (or Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs) led the firm and its very-public-facing co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, to declare a "Return to Windows," followed by a stew of Windows/Mac/Linux. The company waged a public battle with Apple over its App Store subscription policies, and the resulting outcry helped nudge Apple a...
1 day ago
Studies of migraine’s many triggers offer paths to new therapies
For Cherise Irons, chocolate, red wine, and aged cheeses are dangerous. So are certain sounds, perfumes and other strong scents, cold weather, and thunderstorms. Stress and lack of sleep, too. She suspects all of these things can trigger her migraine attacks, which manifest in a variety of ways: pounding pain in the back of her head, exquisite sensitivity to the slightest sound, even blackouts and partial paralysis. Irons, 48, of Coral Springs, Florida, once worked as a school assistant principal....
1 day ago
It’s the Enterprise vs. the Gorn in Strange New Worlds clip
Sneak peek at S3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The Star Trek franchise made its presence known with a special panel during New York City Comic-Con this past weekend. Among the highlights: Paramount unveiled a three-minute preview clip from the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and a clip from the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. In other news, while the first season of new series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is still in production,...
1 day ago
ByteDance intern fired for planting malicious code in AI models
After rumors swirled that TikTok owner ByteDance had lost tens of millions after an intern sabotaged its AI models, ByteDance issued a statement this weekend hoping to silence all the social media chatter in China. In a social media post translated and reviewed by Ars, ByteDance clarified "facts" about "interns destroying large model training" and confirmed that one intern was fired in August. According to ByteDance, the intern had held a position in the company's commercial technology team but was...
1 day ago
Mercedes-Benz opens its own recycling facility for EV batteries
Today, Mercedes-Benz opened its first battery-recycling plant in Germany. The new plant will use an "integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical" approach to recycling electric vehicle batteries and expects to recover more than 96 percent of the valuable minerals and metals used in EV batteries. "Mercedes-Benz has set itself the goal of building the most desirable cars in a sustainable way. As a pioneer in automotive engineering, Europe's first integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical battery recycling factory marks a key milestone toward enhancing raw-materials sustainability," said Ola...
1 day ago
Solar power from space? Actually, it might happen in a couple of years.
Like nuclear fusion, the idea of space-based solar power has always seemed like a futuristic technology with an actual deployment into communities ever remaining a couple of decades away. The concept of harvesting solar power continuously from large satellites in space—where there are no nights, no clouds, and no atmosphere to interfere with the collection of photons—is fairly simple. Large solar arrays in geostationary orbit collect solar energy and beam it back to Earth via microwaves as a continuous source...
1 day ago
Squadron 42’s new 2026 launch date will miss its original target by 11 years
It's been almost exactly a year now since we reported on the announcement that Squadron 42—the single-player campaign portion of the now 12-year-old crowdfunding boondoggle Star Citizen—was "feature complete" and in the "polish phase." Now, many years after the game's original 2015 release target, developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) says that, with just a year or two of additional "polish," the game will finally launch sometime in 2026. The announcement came during this weekend's CitizenCon, per IGN, where RSI founder...
1 day ago
The 2025 VW ID Buzz electric bus delivers on the hype
Volkswagen provided flights from Washington, DC, to San Francisco and accommodation so Ars could drive the ID Buzz. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. SAN FRANCISCO—In all the years we've been writing about cars, very few vehicles have generated as much attention as the Volkswagen ID Buzz. At a time when SUVs look increasingly threatening, the Buzz seems like an antidote, with gentle curves and something of a friendly grin at the front. Plus, people are starting to get...
1 day ago
To the astonishment of forecasters, a tiny hurricane just sprang up near Cuba
A hurricane so small that it could not be observed by satellite formed this weekend, surprising meteorologists and even forecasters at the National Hurricane Center. Hurricane Oscar developed on Saturday near Turks and Caicos, and to the northeast of Cuba, in the extreme southwestern Atlantic Ocean. As of Saturday evening, hurricane-force winds extended just 5 miles (8 km) from the center of the storm. This is not the smallest tropical cyclone—as defined by sustained winds greater than 39 mph, or...
2 days ago
SpaceX prevails over ULA, wins military launch contracts worth $733 million
The US Space Force's Space Systems Command announced Friday it has ordered nine launches from SpaceX in the first batch of dozens of missions the military will buy in a new phase of competition for lucrative national security launch contracts. The nine launches are divided into two fixed-price "task orders" that Space Systems Command opened up for bids earlier this year. One covers seven launches with groups of spacecraft for the Space Development Agency's constellation of missile tracking and data...
4 days ago
MechWarrior 5: Clans is supposed to be newbie-friendly, and I put it to the test
It is a matter of settled law on the Judge John Hodgman podcast that people like what they like, and you can't force someone to like something. It is called the Tom Waits Principle. I thought about that principle constantly while I was trying to open myself up to MechWarrior 5: Clans. Trying to jump into this game and like it, so that I'd have some critical assessment of it, was akin to handing a friend The Black Rider and assuming...
4 days ago
Bizarre fish has sensory “legs” it uses for walking and tasting
Evolution has turned out bizarre and baffling creatures, such as walking fish. It only gets weirder from there. Some of these fish not only walk on the seafloor, but use their leg-like appendages to taste for signs of prey that might be hiding. Most species of sea robins are bottom-dwellers that both swim and crawl around on “legs” that extend from their pectoral fins. An international team of researchers has now discovered that the legs of the northern sea robin,...
4 days ago
Judge slams Florida for censoring political ad: “It’s the First Amendment, stupid”
US District Judge Mark Walker had a blunt message for the Florida surgeon general in an order halting the government official's attempt to censor a political ad that opposes restrictions on abortion. "To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid," Walker, an Obama appointee who is chief judge in US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, wrote yesterday in a ruling that granted a temporary restraining order. "Whether it's a woman's right...
4 days ago
Desalination system adjusts itself to work with renewable power
Fresh water we can use for drinking or agriculture is only about 3 percent of the global water supply, and nearly 70 percent of that is trapped in glaciers and ice caps. So far, that was enough to keep us going, but severe draughts have left places like Jordan, Egypt, sub-Saharan Africa, Spain, and California with limited access to potable water. One possible solution is to tap into the remaining 97 percent of the water we have on Earth. The...
4 days ago
Amazon exec tells employees to work elsewhere if they dislike RTO policy
Amazon workers are being reminded that they can find work elsewhere if they’re unhappy with Amazon’s return-to-office (RTO) mandate. In September, Amazon told staff that they’ll have to RTO five days a week starting in 2025. Amazon employees are currently allowed to work remotely twice a week. A memo from CEO Andy Jassy announcing the policy change said that “it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture” when working at the office. On Thursday, at...
4 days ago
US suspects TSMC helped Huawei skirt export controls, report says
Yesterday, it was reported that the US Department of Commerce is investigating the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) over suspicions that the chipmaker may have been subverting 5G export controls to make "artificial intelligence or smartphone chips for the Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies," sources with direct knowledge told The Information. The Department of Commerce has yet to officially announce the probe and declined Ars' request for comment. But TSMC promptly issued a statement today, defending itself as "a law-abiding...
4 days ago
Elon Musk changes X terms to steer lawsuits to his favorite Texas court
Elon Musk's X updated its terms of service to steer user lawsuits to US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the same court where a judge who bought Tesla stock is overseeing an X lawsuit against the nonprofit Media Matters for America. The new terms that apply to users of the X social network say that all disputes related to the terms "will be brought exclusively in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas or...
4 days ago
OpenAI releases ChatGPT app for Windows
On Thursday, OpenAI released an early Windows version of its first ChatGPT app for Windows, following a Mac version that launched in May. Currently, it's only available to subscribers of Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu versions of ChatGPT, and users can download it for free in the Microsoft Store for Windows. OpenAI is positioning the release as a beta test. "This is an early version, and we plan to bring the full experience to all users later this year," OpenAI...
4 days ago
Tesla FSD crashes in fog, sun glare—Feds open new safety investigation
Today, federal safety investigators opened a new investigation aimed at Tesla's electric vehicles. This is now the 14th investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and one of several currently open. This time, it's the automaker's highly controversial "full self-driving" feature that's in the crosshairs—NHTSA says it now has four reports of Teslas using FSD and then crashing after the camera-only system encountered fog, sun glare, or airborne dust. Of the four crashes that sparked this investigation, one caused...
4 days ago
Adobe shows off 3D rotation tool for flat drawings
At this point, we're used to AI-powered image tools that instantly pull off previously high-effort edits, like filling in the missing bits of a scene or erasing unwanted parts of a photo without affecting the background. But a new Adobe Illustrator tool demonstrated at this week's Adobe MAX conference takes 2D image editing things in a literal different direction, letting artists instantly transform 2D vector images into 3D models that can be rotated around the axis of the screen itself....
4 days ago
Simple voltage pulse can restore capacity to Li-Si batteries
If you're using a large battery for a specialized purpose—say grid-scale storage or an electric vehicle—then it's possible to tweak the battery chemistry, provide a little bit of excess capacity, and carefully manage its charging and discharging so that it enjoys a long life span. But for consumer electronics, the batteries are smaller, the need for light weight dictates the chemistry, and the demand for quick charging can be higher. So most batteries in our gadgets start to see serious...
4 days ago
Rocket Report: Bloomberg calls for SLS cancellation; SpaceX hits century mark
Welcome to Edition 7.16 of the Rocket Report! Even several days later, it remains difficult to process the significance of what SpaceX achieved in South Texas last Sunday. The moment of seeing a rocket fall out of the sky and be captured by two arms felt historic to me, as historic as the company's first drone ship landing in April 2016. What a time to be alive. As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss...
4 days ago
Finally upgrading from isc-dhcp-server to isc-kea for my homelab
A few months back, I put together a big fat guide on how to configure DNS and DHCP on your LAN the old-school way, with bind and dhcpd working together to seamlessly hand out addresses to hosts on your network and also register those hosts in your LAN's forward and reverse DNS lookup zones. The article did really well—thanks for reading it!—but one thing commenters pointed out was that my preferred dhcpd implementation, the venerable isc-dhcp-server, reached end-of-life in 2022....
4 days ago
Biden administration curtails controls on some space-related exports
The US Commerce Department announced Thursday it is easing restrictions on exports of space-related technology, answering a yearslong call from space companies to reform regulations governing international trade. This is the most significant update to space-related export regulations in a decade and opens more opportunities for US companies to sell their satellite hardware abroad. “We are very excited about this rollout," a senior Commerce official said during a background call with reporters. "It’s been a long time coming, and I...
5 days ago
Qualcomm cancels Windows dev kit PC for “comprehensively” failing to meet standards
It's been a big year for Windows running on Arm chips, something that Microsoft and Arm chipmakers have been trying to get off the ground for well over a decade. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus are at the heart of dozens of Copilot+ Windows PCs, which promise unique AI features and good battery life without as many of the app and hardware compatibility problems that have plagued Windows-on-Arm in the past. Part of the initial wave of Copilot+...
5 days ago
Cheap AI “video scraping” can now extract data from any screen recording
Recently, AI researcher Simon Willison wanted to add up his charges from using a cloud service, but the payment values and dates he needed were scattered among a dozen separate emails. Inputting them manually would have been tedious, so he turned to a technique he calls "video scraping," which involves feeding a screen recording video into an AI model, similar to ChatGPT, for data extraction purposes. What he discovered seems simple on its surface, but the quality of the result...
5 days ago
The Sisterhood faces a powerful foe in Dune: Prophecy trailer
Dune: Prophecy will premiere on HBO and Max on November 17, 2024. New York Comic-Con kicked off today, and among the highlights was an HBO panel devoted to the platform's forthcoming new series, Dune: Prophecy—including the release of a two-and-a-half-minute trailer. As previously reported, the series was announced in 2019, with director Denis Villeneuve serving as an executive producer and Alison Schapker (Alias, Fringe, Altered Carbon) serving as showrunner. It's a prequel series inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune,...
5 days ago
Redbox easily reverse-engineered to reveal customers’ names, zip codes, rentals
Since Redbox went bankrupt, many have wondered what will happen to those red kiosks and DVDs. Another question worth examining is: What will happen to all the data stored inside the Redboxes? Redbox parent company Chicken Soup for the Soul filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in June and is in the process of liquidating its assets. Meanwhile, stores with Redboxes are eager to remove the obsolete hardware. And tinkerers have reported getting their hands on Redbox kiosks and doing all...
5 days ago
How the Malleus Maleficarum fueled the witch trial craze
Between 1400 and 1775, a significant upsurge in witch trials swept across early modern Europe, resulting in the execution of an estimated 40,000–60,000 accused witches. Historians and social scientists have long studied this period in hopes of learning more about how large-scale social changes occur. Some have pointed to the invention of the printing press and the publication of witch-hunting manuals—most notably the highly influential Malleus Maleficarum—as a major factor, making it easier for the witch-hunting hysteria to spread across...
5 days ago
US vaccinations fall again as more parents refuse lifesaving shots for kids
Measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus—devastating and sometimes deadly diseases await comebacks in the US as more and more parents are declining routine childhood vaccines that have proved safe and effective. The vaccination rates among kindergartners have fallen once again, dipping into the range of 92 percent in the 2023–2024 school year, down from about 93 percent the previous school year and 95 percent in 2019–2020. That's according to an analysis of the latest vaccination data published today by the Centers...
5 days ago
Here’s how SIM swap in alleged bitcoin pump-and-dump scheme worked
US officials charged a man with compromising the official Twitter/X account of the Securities and Exchange Commission for purposes of posting false information that caused the price of bitcoin to spike. The January attack, federal prosecutors said, started with a SIM swap, a form of fraud that takes control of a cell phone number by assuming the identity of the person the number belongs to. The attacker then uses the false identity to induce an employee of the cellular carrier...
5 days ago
It’s increasingly unlikely that humans will fly around the Moon next year
Don't book your tickets for the launch of NASA's Artemis II mission next year just yet. We have had reason to doubt the official September 2025 launch date for the mission, the first crewed flight into deep space in more than five decades, for a while now. This is principally because NASA is continuing to mull the implications of damage to the Orion spacecraft's heat shield from the Artemis I mission nearly two years ago. However, it turns out that...
5 days ago
EU considers calculating X fines by including revenue from Musk’s other firms
European Union regulators warned Elon Musk's X platform that it may calculate fines by including revenue from Musk's other companies, including SpaceX, according to a Bloomberg article published today. X was previously accused of violating the Digital Services Act (DSA), which could result in fines of up to 6 percent of total worldwide annual turnover. That fine would be levied on the "provider" of X, which could be defined to include other Musk-led firms. Bloomberg writes that "regulators are considering...
5 days ago
Android 15’s security and privacy features are the update’s highlight
Android 15 started rolling out to Pixel devices Tuesday and will arrive, through various third-party efforts, on other Android devices at some point. There is always a bunch of little changes to discover in an Android release, whether by reading, poking around, or letting your phone show you 25 new things after it restarts. In Android 15, some of the most notable involve making your device less appealing to snoops and thieves and more secure against the kids to whom...
5 days ago
Feds test whether existing laws can combat surge in fake AI child sex images
Cops aren't sure how to protect kids from an ever-escalating rise in fake child sex abuse imagery fueled by advances in generative AI. Last year, child safety experts warned of thousands of "AI-generated child sex images" rapidly spreading on the dark web around the same time the FBI issued a warning that "benign photos" of children posted online could be easily manipulated to exploit and harm kids. So far, US prosecutors have only brought two criminal cases in 2024 attempting...
5 days ago
ULA is examining debris recovered from Vulcan rocket’s shattered booster nozzle
When the exhaust nozzle on one of the Vulcan rocket's strap-on boosters failed shortly after liftoff earlier this month, it scattered debris across the beachfront landscape just east of the launch pad on Florida's Space Coast. United Launch Alliance, the company that builds and launches the Vulcan rocket, is investigating the cause of the booster anomaly before resuming Vulcan flights. Despite the nozzle failure, the rocket continued its climb and ended up reaching its planned trajectory heading into deep space....
5 days ago
Meta fires staffers for using $25 meal credits on household goods
Meta has fired about two dozen staff in Los Angeles for using their $25 meal credits to buy household items including acne pads, wine glasses, and laundry detergent. The terminations took place last week, just days before the $1.5 trillion social media company separately began restructuring certain teams across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs, its augmented and virtual reality arm, on Tuesday. The revamp has included cutting some staff and relocating others, several people familiar with the decisions said, in...
5 days ago
Two accused of DDoSing some of the world’s biggest tech companies
Federal authorities have charged two Sudanese nationals with running an operation that performed tens of thousands of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against some of the world’s biggest technology companies, as well as critical infrastructure and government agencies. The service, branded as Anonymous Sudan, directed powerful and sustained DDoSes against Big Tech companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Riot Games, PayPal, Steam, Hulu, Netflix, Reddit, GitHub, and Cloudflare. Other targets included CNN.com, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the US departments...
6 days ago
DNA confirms these 19th-century lions ate humans
For several months in 1898, a pair of male lions turned the Tsavo region of Kenya into their own human hunting grounds, killing many construction workers who were building the Kenya-Uganda railway. A team of scientists has now identified exactly what kinds of prey the so-called "Tsavo Man-Eaters" fed upon, based on DNA analysis of hairs collected from the lions' teeth, according to a recent paper published in the journal Current Biology. They found evidence of various species the lions...
6 days ago
X’s depressing ad revenue helps Musk avoid EU’s strictest antitrust law
Following an investigation, Elon Musk's X has won its fight to avoid gatekeeper status under the European Union's strict competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA). On Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) announced that "X does indeed not qualify as a gatekeeper in relation to its online social networking service, given that the investigation revealed that X is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users." Since March, X had strongly opposed the gatekeeper designation by arguing that...
6 days ago
There’s another massive meat recall over Listeria—and it’s a doozy
Another nationwide meat recall is underway over Listeria contamination—and it's far more formidable than the last. As of October 15, meat supplier BrucePac, of Durant, Oklahoma, is recalling 11.8 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat and poultry products after routine federal safety testing found Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially deadly bacterium, in samples of the company's poultry. The finding triggered an immediate recall, which was first issued on October 9. But, officials are still working to understand the extent of the contamination—and...
6 days ago
Student was punished for using AI—then his parents sued teacher and administrators
A school district in Massachusetts was sued by a student's parents after the boy was punished for using an artificial intelligence chatbot to complete an assignment. The lawsuit says the Hingham High School student handbook did not include a restriction on the use of AI. "They told us our son cheated on a paper, which is not what happened," Jennifer Harris told WCVB. "They basically punished him for a rule that doesn't exist." Jennifer and her husband, Dale, filed the...
6 days ago
FTC “click to cancel” rule seeks to end free trial traps, sneaky auto-enrollments
It will soon be easy to "click to cancel" subscriptions after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) adopted a final rule on Wednesday that makes it challenging for businesses to opt out of easy cancellation methods. “Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a press release. “The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service...
6 days ago
Amazon joins Google in investing in small modular nuclear power
On Tuesday, Google announced that it had made a power purchase agreement for electricity generated by a small modular nuclear reactor design that hasn't even received regulatory approval yet. Today, it's Amazon's turn. The company's Amazon Web Services (AWS) group has announced three different investments, including one targeting a different startup that has its own design for small, modular nuclear reactors—one that has not yet received regulatory approval. Unlike Google's deal, which is a commitment to purchase power should the...
6 days ago
Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks
Winamp, through its Belgian owner Llama Group, posted the source for its "Legacy Player Code" on September 24 so that developers could "contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve." Less than a month later, that repository has been entirely deleted, after it either bumped up against or broke its strange hodgepodge of code licenses, seemingly revealed the source code for other non-open software packages, and made a pretty bad impression on the open-source community. "Collaborative"...
6 days ago
Deepfake lovers swindle victims out of $46M in Hong Kong AI scam
On Monday, Hong Kong police announced the arrest of 27 people involved in a romance scam operation that used AI face-swapping techniques to defraud victims of $46 million through fake cryptocurrency investments, reports the South China Morning Post. The scam ring created attractive female personas for online dating, using unspecified tools to transform their appearances and voices. Those arrested included six recent university graduates allegedly recruited to set up fake cryptocurrency trading platforms. An unnamed source told the South China...
6 days ago
$250 Analogue 3D will play all your N64 cartridges in 4K early next year
It's been exactly one year since the initial announcement of the Analogue 3D, an HD-upscaled, FPGA-powered Nintendo 64 in the tradition of Analogue's long-running line of high-end retro machines. Today, Analogue is revealing more details about the hardware, which will sell for $250 and plans to ship in the first quarter of 2025 (a slight delay from the previously announced 2024 release plan). Like previous Analogue devices, the Analogue 3D uses a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to simulate the actual...
6 days ago
Startup can identify deepfake video in real time
Christopher Ren does a solid Elon Musk impression. Ren is a product manager at Reality Defender, a company that makes tools to combat AI disinformation. During a video call last week, I watched him use some viral GitHub code and a single photo to generate a simplistic deepfake of Elon Musk that maps onto his own face. This digital impersonation was to demonstrate how the startup’s new AI detection tool could work. As Ren masqueraded as Musk on our video...
6 days ago
How to install Windows 11 on supported and unsupported PCs, 24H2 edition
Windows 11 24H2 has been released to the general public, and even though it's still called Windows 11 and still looks like Windows 11, it's probably the operating system's most significant update since its release in October of 2021. You may or may not be excited about some of the new generative AI features, but it has a lot of other things in it, too. And even if you're not in love with Windows or the current trajectory of Windows,...
6 days ago
Amazon refreshes its monochrome Kindle lineup, including a bigger Paperwhite
Amazon is shaking up its entire Kindle e-reader lineup today, at least by the slow-moving and relatively placid standards of the e-reader market. The company is announcing a major refresh to the pen-centric Kindle Scribe, a screen-size bump for the mainstream Kindle Paperwhite, and small tweaks to the basic Kindle—a rare simultaneous refresh for devices that the company usually updates one or two at a time. In addition to the monochrome e-readers, Amazon introduced its first color e-reader today. The...
6 days ago
Amazon’s first color Kindle e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft, will run you $280
Amazon is overhauling its entire Kindle e-reader lineup today. And nestled among the nice-but- straightforward updates to the base model Kindle, the mainstream Kindle Paperwhite, and the pen-centric Kindle Scribe is a first: the Kindle Colorsoft, Amazon's first color e-reader. The Colorsoft will launch on October 30 and starts at $279.99. That's quite a bit higher than the new Kindle Paperwhite, which starts at $159.99, but it's a little less than the $290 launch price of the now-discontinued Kindle Oasis....
6 days ago
What we can learn from animals about death and mortality
Human beings live every day with the understanding of our own mortality, but do animals have any concept of death? It's a question that has long intrigued scientists, fueled by reports of ants, for example, appearing to attend their own"funerals"; chimps gathering somberly around fallen comrades; or a mother whale who carried her dead baby with her for two weeks in an apparent show of grief. Philosopher Susana Monsó is a leading expert on animal cognition, behavior and ethics at...
6 days ago
Drugmakers can keep making off-brand weight-loss drugs as FDA backpedals
Facing a lawsuit, the Food and Drug Administration has decided to reconsider its decision to take popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs off of the national shortage list, which will allow compounding pharmacies to continue selling cheaper copycat versions—at least for now. A trade organization representing compounding pharmacies sued the agency last week over its October 2 announcement that there was no longer a shortage of tirzepatide drugs, branded as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss. The products, members...
7 days ago
FCC Republican opposes regulation of data caps with analogy to coffee refills
The Federal Communications Commission is taking a closer look at how broadband data caps affect consumers, and is considering whether it has authority to regulate how Internet service providers impose such caps. Democrats are spearheading the effort over the opposition of the FCC's Republican minority. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel floated a plan to open a formal inquiry into data caps in June 2023, and the FCC is finally moving ahead. A Notice of Inquiry announced today "explores how broadband data...
7 days ago
North Korean hackers use newly discovered Linux malware to raid ATMs
In the beginning, North Korean hackers compromised the banking infrastructure running AIX, IBM’s proprietary version of Unix. Next, they hacked infrastructure running Windows. Now, the state-backed bank robbers have expanded their repertoire to include Linux. The malware, tracked under the name FASTCash, is a remote access tool that gets installed on payment switches inside compromised networks that handle payment card transactions. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency first warned of FASTCash in 2018 in an advisory that said the...
7 days ago
Sustainable building effort reaches new heights with wooden skyscrapers
At the University of Toronto, just across the street from the football stadium, workers are putting up a 14-story building with space for classrooms and faculty offices. What’s unusual is how they’re building it — by bolting together giant beams, columns, and panels made of manufactured slabs of wood. As each wood element is delivered by flatbed, a tall crane lifts it into place and holds it in position while workers attach it with metal connectors. In its half-finished state,...
7 days ago
SpaceX tells FCC it has a plan to make Starlink about 10 times faster
SpaceX is seeking approval for changes to Starlink that the company says will enable gigabit-per-second broadband service. In an application submitted to the Federal Communications Commission on October 11, SpaceX claims the requested "modification and its companion amendment will enable the Gen2 system to deliver gigabit-speed, truly low-latency broadband and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to all Americans and the billions of people globally who still lack access to adequate broadband." SpaceX said it is seeking "several small-but-meaningful updates to the orbital...
7 days ago
Reports: Tesla’s prototype Optimus robots were controlled by humans
After Elon Musk provided his "long-term" vision for autonomous, humanoid robots at last week's "We, Robot" event, we expressed some skepticism about the autonomy of the Optimus prototypes sent out for a post-event mingle with the assembled, partying humans. Now, there's been a raft of confirmation that human teleoperators were indeed puppeting the robot prototypes for much of the night. Bloomberg cites unnamed "people familiar with the matter" in reporting that Tesla "used humans to remotely control some capabilities" of...
7 days ago
Spotify criticized for letting fake albums appear on real artist pages
This fall, thousands of fake albums were added to Spotify, with some appearing on real artist pages, where they're positioned to lure unsuspecting listeners into streaming by posing as new releases from favorite bands. An Ars reader flagged the issue after finding a fake album on the Spotify page of an UK psych rock band called Gong. The Gong fan knew that the band had begun touring again after a surprise new release last year, but the "latest release" listed...
7 days ago
Google and Kairos sign nuclear reactor deal with aim to power AI
On Monday, Google announced an agreement with Kairos Power to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMRs), marking the first deal of its kind. The partnership aims to bring Kairos Power's initial SMR online by 2030, with additional reactor deployments planned through 2035, though no working SMR has yet been constructed in the US. With the energy demands of AI growing, Google has not been alone in encouraging new development of alternative, no-emission power sources. "The grid needs...
7 days ago
What do planet formation and badminton have in common?
The birth of a planet starts with a microscopic grain floating in a protoplanetary disk, a swirling cloud of gas and other particles surrounding a young star. How the gas and dust interact has implications for the formation of new worlds. “Those teeny grains—those are the building blocks of planets,” said Zhe-Yu Daniel Lin, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. He describes the shape of the grains as “potatoes.” It’s hot and breezy in the interstellar cloud, but...
7 days ago
Apple A17 Pro chip is the star of the first iPad mini update in three years
Apple quietly announced a new version of its iPad mini tablet via press release this morning, the tablet's first update since 2021. The seventh-generation iPad mini looks mostly identical to the sixth-generation version, with a power-button-mounted Touch ID sensor and a slim-bezeled display. But Apple has swapped out the A15 Bionic chip for the Apple A17 Pro, the same processor it used in the iPhone 15 Pro last year. The new iPad mini is available for preorder now and starts...
7 days ago
The base model is always the best—we drive the 2025 Porsche Macan
Porsche provided flights from Washington to Stuttgart and accommodation so Ars could drive the Macan and Macan 4S. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. STUTTGART, Germany—Porsche made its reputation with its rear-engined sports cars, but today it's the SUVs that even make that possible. But it makes those SUVs in order to appeal to Porsche drivers, offering five-door practicality but with driver-engaging handling, and a certain level of fit and finish. I've always thought of the Macan as Porsche's...
7 days ago
NASA launches mission to explore the frozen frontier of Jupiter’s moon Europa
NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft lifted off Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, kicking off a $5.2 billion robotic mission to explore one of the most promising locations in the Solar System for finding extraterrestrial life. The Falcon Heavy rocket fired its 27 kerosene-fueled engines and vaulted away from Launch Complex 39A at 12:06 pm EDT (16:06 UTC) Monday. Delayed several days due to Hurricane Milton, which passed through Central Florida late last week,...
8 days ago
Adobe unveils AI video generator trained on licensed content
On Monday, Adobe announced Firefly Video Model, a new AI-powered text-to-video generation tool that can create novel videos from written prompts. It joins similar offerings from OpenAI, Runway, Google, and Meta in an increasingly crowded field. Unlike the competition, Adobe claims that Firefly Video Model is trained exclusively on licensed content, potentially sidestepping ethical and copyright issues that have plagued other generative AI tools. Because of its licensed training data roots, Adobe calls Firefly Video Model "the first publicly available...
8 days ago
Apple study exposes deep cracks in LLMs’ “reasoning” capabilities
For a while now, companies like OpenAI and Google have been touting advanced "reasoning" capabilities as the next big step in their latest artificial intelligence models. Now, though, a new study from six Apple engineers shows that the mathematical "reasoning" displayed by advanced large language models can be extremely brittle and unreliable in the face of seemingly trivial changes to common benchmark problems. The fragility highlighted in these new results helps support previous research suggesting that LLMs use of probabilistic...
8 days ago
Expert witness used Copilot to make up fake damages, irking judge
A New York judge recently called out an expert witness for using Microsoft's Copilot chatbot to inaccurately estimate damages in a real estate dispute that partly depended on an accurate assessment of damages to win. In an order Thursday, judge Jonathan Schopf warned that "due to the nature of the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and its inherent reliability issues" that any use of AI should be disclosed before testimony or evidence is admitted in court. Admitting that the court...
8 days ago
Ward Christensen, BBS inventor and architect of our online age, dies at age 78
Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), has died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. He was found deceased at his home on Friday after friends requested a wellness check. Christensen, along with Randy Suess, created the first BBS in Chicago in 1978, leading to an important cultural era of digital community-building that presaged much of our online world today. In the 1980s and 1990s, BBSes introduced many home computer users to multiplayer online gaming, message...
8 days ago
The Internet Archive and its 916 billion saved web pages are back online
The Internet Archive has brought its Wayback Machine back online "in a provisional, read-only manner" as it continues to recover from attacks that took the site down last week, founder Brewster Kahle said in a post last night. The archive.org home page points users to the now-functional Wayback Machine but notes that other Internet Archive services are temporarily offline. Kahle said it was "safe to resume" the Wayback Machine's operations, but that it "might need further maintenance, in which case...
8 days ago
Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence—experts want it to stop
Has your dentist ever told you that it's recommended to get routine dental X-rays every year? My (former) dentist's office did this year—in writing, even. And they claimed that the recommendation came from the American Dental Association. It's a common refrain from dentists, but it's false. The American Dental Association does not recommend annual routine X-rays. And this is not new; it's been that way for well over a decade. The association's guidelines from 2012 recommended that adults who don't...
8 days ago
Invisible text that AI chatbots understand and humans can’t? Yep, it’s a thing.
What if there was a way to sneak malicious instructions into Claude, Copilot, or other top-name AI chatbots and get confidential data out of them by using characters large language models can recognize and their human users can’t? As it turns out, there was—and in some cases still is. The invisible characters, the result of a quirk in the Unicode text encoding standard, create an ideal covert channel that can make it easier for attackers to conceal malicious payloads fed...
8 days ago
People think they already know everything they need to make decisions
The world is full of people who have excessive confidence in their own abilities. This is famously described as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how people who lack expertise in something will necessarily lack the knowledge needed to recognize their own limits. Now, a different set of researchers has come out with what might be viewed as a corollary to Dunning-Kruger: People have a strong tendency to believe that they always have enough data to make an informed decision—regardless of...
8 days ago
Smart gardening firm’s shutdown a reminder of Internet of Things’ fickle nature
AeroGarden, which sells Wi-Fi-connected indoor gardening systems, is going out of business on January 1. While Scotts Miracle-Gro has continued selling AeroGarden products after announcing the impending shutdown, the future of the devices' companion app is uncertain. AeroGarden systems use hydroponics and LED lights to grow indoor gardens without requiring sunlight or soil. The smart gardening system arrived in 2006, and Scotts Miracle-Gro took over complete ownership in 2020. Some AeroGardens work with the iOS and Android apps that connect...
8 days ago
Rebellion brews underground in Silo S2 trailer
Rebecca Ferguson returns as Juliette in the second season of Apple TV's Silo. Apple TV's dystopian sc-fi drama Silo, based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, was one of the more refreshing surprises on streaming television in 2023: a twist-filled combination of political thriller and police procedural set in a post-apocalyptic world. We included it in our year-end TV roundup, calling the series "one of the more intriguing shows of the year." The official trailer recently dropped for S2,...
8 days ago
Lots of PCs are poised to fall off the Windows 10 update cliff one year from today
One year from today, on October 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for PCs that are still running Windows 10. Organizations and individuals will still be able to pay for three more years of updates, with prices that go up steadily each year (Microsoft still hasn't provided pricing for end users, only saying that it will release pricing info "closer to the October 2025 date.") But for most PCs running Windows 10, the end of the line is...
8 days ago
Musk’s X blocked links to JD Vance dossier after hearing from Trump campaign
Elon Musk's X blocked links to the JD Vance dossier after hearing directly from the Trump campaign, according to a new report that describes Musk's extensive efforts to boost Trump's presidential campaign. A New York Times article titled "Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump" said that "the relationship [between Trump and Musk] has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter's publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation...
8 days ago
Two comets will be visible in the night skies this month
The human mind may find it difficult to conceptualize: a cosmic cloud so colossal it surrounds the Sun and eight planets as it extends trillions of miles into deep space. The spherical shell known as the Oort Cloud is, for all practical purposes, invisible. Its constituent particles are spread so thinly, and so far from the light of any star, including the Sun, that astronomers simply cannot see the cloud, even though it envelops us like a blanket. It is...
8 days ago
SpaceX catches returning rocket in mid-air, turning a fanciful idea into reality
BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—SpaceX accomplished a groundbreaking engineering feat Sunday when it launched the fifth test flight of its gigantic Starship rocket and then caught the booster back at the launch pad in Texas with mechanical arms seven minutes later. This achievement is the first of its kind, and it's crucial for SpaceX's vision of rapidly reusing the Starship rocket, enabling human expeditions to the Moon and Mars, routine access to space for mind-bogglingly massive payloads, and novel capabilities that...
9 days ago
Can walls of oysters protect shores against hurricanes? Darpa wants to know.
On October 10, 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base on the Gulf of Mexico—a pillar of American air superiority—found itself under aerial attack. Hurricane Michael, first spotted as a Category 2 storm off the Florida coast, unexpectedly hulked up to a Category 5. Sustained winds of 155 miles per hour whipped into the base, flinging power poles, flipping F-22s, and totaling more than 200 buildings. The sole saving grace: Despite sitting on a peninsula, Tyndall avoided flood damage. Michael’s 9- to...
9 days ago
Starship is about to launch on its fifth flight, and this time there’s a catch
Early Sunday morning, SpaceX will try something no one has ever done before. If all goes according to plan, around seven minutes after lifting off from South Texas, the huge stainless steel booster from SpaceX's Starship rocket will come back to the launch pad and slow to a hover, allowing powerful mechanical arms to capture it in midair. This is SpaceX's approach to recovering Starship's Super Heavy booster. If it works, this method will make it easier and faster to...
10 days ago
Why a diabetes drug fell short of anticancer hopes
Pamela Goodwin has received hundreds of emails from patients asking if they should take a cheap, readily available drug, metformin, to treat their cancer. It’s a fair question: Metformin, commonly used to treat diabetes, has been investigated for treating a range of cancer types in thousands of studies on laboratory cells, animals, and people. But Goodwin, an epidemiologist and medical oncologist treating breast cancer at the University of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, advises against it. No gold-standard trials have proved...
10 days ago
Over 86% of surveyed health care providers are short on IV fluids
More than 86 percent of healthcare providers surveyed across the US are experiencing shortages of intravenous fluids after Hurricane Helene's rampage took out a manufacturing plant in western North Carolina that makes 60 percent of the country's supply. IV fluids are used for everything from intravenous rehydration to drug delivery. The plant also made peritoneal dialysis fluids used to treat kidney failure. Premier, a group purchasing organization for medical supplies that counts thousands of hospitals and health systems among its...
11 days ago
Climate change boosted Milton’s landfall strength from Category 2 to 3
As attempts to clean up after Hurricane Milton are beginning, scientists at the World Weather Attribution project have taken a quick look at whether climate change contributed to its destructive power. While the analysis is limited by the fact that not all the meteorological data is even available yet, by several measures, climate change made aspects of Milton significantly more likely. This isn't a huge surprise, given that Milton traveled across the same exceptionally warm Gulf of Mexico that Helene...
11 days ago
Ex-Twitter execs push for $200M severance as Elon Musk runs X into ground
Former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are urging a court to open discovery in a dispute over severance and other benefits they allege they were wrongfully denied after Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022. According to the former executives, they've been blocked for seven months from accessing key documents proving they're owed roughly $200 million under severance agreements that they say Musk willfully tried to avoid paying in retaliation for executives forcing him to close the Twitter...
11 days ago
5th Circuit rules ISP should have terminated Internet users accused of piracy
Music publishing companies notched another court victory against a broadband provider that refused to terminate the accounts of Internet users accused of piracy. In a ruling on Wednesday, the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with the big three record labels against Grande Communications, a subsidiary of Astound Broadband. The appeals court ordered a new trial on damages because it said the $46.8 million award was too high, but affirmed the lower court's finding that Grande...
11 days ago
Asahi Linux’s bespoke GPU driver is running Windows games on Apple Silicon Macs
A few years ago, the idea of running PC games on a Mac, in Linux, or on Arm processors would have been laughable. But the developers behind Asahi Linux—the independent project that is getting Linux working on Apple Silicon Macs—have managed to do all three of these things at once. The feat brings together a perfect storm of open source projects, according to Asahi Linux GPU lead Alyssa Rosenzweig: the FEX project to translate x86 CPU code to Arm, the...
11 days ago
Steam adds the harsh truth that you’re buying “a license,” not the game itself
There comes a point in most experienced Steam shoppers' lives where they wonder what would happen if their account was canceled or stolen, or perhaps they just stopped breathing. It's scary to think about how many games in your backlog will never get played; scarier, still, to think about how you don't, in most real senses of the word, own any of them. Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting "false advertising" of "digital goods,"...
11 days ago
Based on your feedback, the Ars 9.0.1 redesign is live
We love all the feedback that Ars readers have submitted since we rolled out the Ars Technica 9.0 design last week—even the, err, deeply passionate remarks. It's humbling that, after 26 years, so many people still care so much about making Ars into the best possible version of itself. Based on your feedback, we've just pushed a new update to the site that we hope fixes many readers' top concerns. (You might need to hard-refresh to see it.) Much of...
11 days ago
Trek CarBack bike radar lets you know when cars are approaching
"Car back!" If you've ever been on a group bike ride, you've no doubt heard these two words shouted by a nearby rider. It's also the name of Trek's new $199 bike radar. For safety-conscious cyclists, bike radars have been a game-changer. Usually mounted on the seat post, the radar units alert cyclists to cars approaching from behind. While they will work on any bike on any road, bike radar is most useful in suburban and rural settings. After all,...
11 days ago
Remains of Andrew “Sandy” Irvine found on Everest
In June 1924, a British mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory and a young engineering student named Andrew "Sandy" Irvine set off for the summit of Mount Everest and disappeared—two more casualties of a peak that has claimed over 300 lives to date. Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's was never found—until now. An expedition led by National Geographic Explorer and professional climber Jimmy Chin—who won an Oscar for the 2019 documentary Free Solo, which he co-directed—has located a...
11 days ago
Are Tesla’s robot prototypes AI marvels or remote-controlled toys?
Two years ago, Tesla's Optimus prototype was an underwhelming mess of exposed wires that could only operate in a carefully controlled stage presentation. Last night, Tesla's "We, Robot" event featured much more advanced Optimus prototypes that could walk around without tethers and interact directly with partygoers. It was an impressive demonstration of the advancement of a technology Tesla's Elon Musk said he thinks "will be the biggest product ever of any kind" (way to set reasonable expectations, there). But the...
11 days ago