Cyberweapon manufacturers plot to stay on the right side of US

Enlarge (credit: FT montage/Shutterstock/Dreamstime)

In the summer of 2019, as Paragon Solutions was building one of the world’s most potent cyberweapons, the company made a prescient decision: before courting a single customer, best get the Americans on side.

The Israeli start-up had watched local rival NSO Group, makers of the controversial Pegasus spyware, fall foul of the Biden administration and be blacklisted in the US. So Paragon sought guidance from top American advisers, secured funding from US venture capital groups, and eventually scored a marquee client that eludes its competition: the US government.

Interviews with half a dozen industry figures about the divergent paths of the two companies underline how the shadowy spyware industry is being reshaped around those friendly to American interests.

Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Diablo 4 review: Off to a hell of a good start

Enlarge

When Diablo 3 released 11 years ago, it was a mess.

Put aside the action role-playing game’s infamous server problems at launch—a product of the series going online-only for the first time—the game itself had fundamental issues. At core was its ill-conceived and universally reviled real-money auction house, which changed the thrust of the series’ loot hunt from “look at this badass helm I got from killing an elite demon” to “look at these practical pants I bought from an in-game spreadsheet for $2.99 USD.” Difficulty and balance were all over the place, and, perhaps worst of all to long-time Diablo fans, the previous games’ dark horror aesthetic was replaced with a more colorful, cartoony vibe.

Two years and a management shakeup later, we got the Reaper of Souls expansion, which completely revamped Diablo 3’s loot and endgame, giving us the game we should have had from the beginning. Art direction notwithstanding, Diablo 3 ended up in a good place, and I played a ton of it, largely due to its genre-leading combat. (Lest we forget, Diablo 2 also had a game-changing expansion in Lord of Destruction.)

Read 43 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Falcon 9 may double the record for consecutive launch success tonight

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches in March, 2023. (credit: SpaceX)

Nearly seven years ago, on a steamy morning in Florida, a small team of SpaceX engineers was fueling a Falcon 9 rocket for a pre-launch firing test of its nine Merlin engines.

It had been a difficult but successful year for the California rocket company, which finally was starting to deliver on a long-promised increase in cadence of launches. A team of dozens of engineers and technicians at SpaceX's facilities in Cape Canaveral had suffered through grueling months of perfecting the "load-and-go" fueling process involved with the Falcon 9 rocket.

To maximize its payload capacity, the booster used super-chilled liquid oxygen to cram as much on board the rocket as possible. But once it was fueled, the rocket had to go quickly or the liquid oxygen would rapidly warm in the Florida heat. That summer the team of engineers had been pushing hard to compress the propellant loading time to launch with the coldest oxygen possible and max out the vehicle's performance.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Street Fighter 6 is great fun for both casual and dedicated players

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

I’ve had an emotional connection with Street Fighter since I was 13 years old.

It was early March 1991, and my friend and I were celebrating his 14th birthday in Santa Cruz, California, spending as much of our weekend at the boardwalk arcade as possible. His mom handed us each a $20 bill for the change machine, and we were determined to stretch our quarters as far as we could.

Scrolling brawlers like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Final Fight were our favorite games. We also loved squaring off in what I consider the first true fighting game, the buttonless, Robotron-style, twin-joysticked Karate Champ.

When we came across a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior cab sitting in the middle of the arcade, we stopped dead in our tracks. Everything about it, from the six buttons per player to the large dynamic sprites and backgrounds, felt larger than life to our teenage brains.

Read 51 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Is cybersecurity an unsolvable problem?

Enlarge (credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In November 1988, a graduate student at Cornell University named Robert Morris, Jr. inadvertently sparked a national crisis by unleashing a self-replicating computer worm on a VAX 11/750 computer in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab. Morris had no malicious intent; it was merely a scientific experiment to see how many computers he could infect. But he made a grievous error, setting his reinfection rate much too high. The worm spread so rapidly that it brought down the entire computer network at Cornell University, crippled those at several other universities, and even infiltrated the computers at Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories.

Making matters worse, his father was a computer scientist and cryptographer who was the chief scientist at the National Security Agency's National Computer Security Center. Even though it was unintentional and witnesses testified that Morris didn't have "a fraudulent or dishonest bone in his body," he was convicted of felonious computer fraud. The judge was merciful during sentencing. Rather than 15–20 years in prison, Morris got three years of probation with community service and had to pay a $10,000 fine. He went on to found Y Combinator with his longtime friend Paul Graham, among other accomplishments.

The "Morris Worm" is just one of five hacking cases that Scott Shapiro highlights in his new book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks. Shapiro is a legal philosopher at Yale University, but as a child, his mathematician father—who worked at Bell Labs—sparked an interest in computing by bringing home various components, like microchips, resistors, diodes, LEDs, and breadboards. Their father/son outings included annual attendance at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers convention in New York City. Then, a classmate in Shapiro's high school biology class introduced him to programming on the school's TRS-80, and Shapiro was hooked. He moved on to working on an Apple II and majored in computer science in college but lost interest afterward and went to law school instead.

Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Why Tears of the Kingdom is worse without item duplication

Enlarge / Finally, Link has enough diamonds to bling out every single one of his teeth. (credit: Nintendo)

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

For a few weeks now, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players have been able to use a surprising number of glitches to endlessly duplicate items, materials, weapons, and more to their heart's content. But the endless item party officially comes to an end today, with data miners reporting that the new ver. 1.1.2 game update fixes these unintended endless item glitches (you can still stock up your inventory before installing the update, by all accounts).

While Nintendo lumps this fix under "several issues [that] have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience," I'm reluctant to call this an improvement at all. On the contrary, I think Nintendo should embrace this "glitch" and make secret codes for infinite items (and money and health, etc.) an integral, intentional option for players who just want to tinker with the game's amazing creation engine.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Green hills forever: Windows XP activation algorithm cracked after 21 years

Enlarge / With this background, potentially the most viewed photograph in human history, Windows XP always signaled that it was prepared for a peaceful retirement. Yet some would have us disturb it. (credit: Charles O'Rear/Microsoft)

It has never been too hard for someone with the right amount of time, desperation, or flexible scruples to get around Windows XP's activation scheme. And yet XP activation, the actual encrypted algorithm, loathed since before it started, has never been truly broken, at least entirely offline. Now, far past the logical end of all things XP, the solution exists, floating around the web's forum-based backchannels for months now.

On the blog of tinyapps.org (first spotted by The Register), which provides micro-scale, minimalist utilities for constrained Windows installations, a blog post appropriately titled "Windows XP Activation: GAME OVER" runs down the semi-recent history of folks looking to activate Windows XP more than 20 years after it debuted, nine years after its end of life, and, crucially, some years after Microsoft turned off its online activation servers (or maybe they just swapped certificates).

xp_activate32.exe, a 18,432-byte program (hash listed on tinyapps' blog post), takes the code generated by Windows XP's phone activation option and processes it into a proper activation key (Confirmation ID), entirely offline. It's persistent across system wipes and re-installs. It is, seemingly, the same key Microsoft would provide for your computer.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

TikTok—banned or not, it’s probably here to stay, an Ars Frontiers 2023 recap

Enlarge / On May 22, Ashley Belanger (top left) moderated a panel featuring Ioana Literat (bottom left), Bryan Cunningham (top right), and Corynne McSherry (bottom right) for the Ars Frontiers 2023 session titled, "TikTok—Banned or Not, It's Probably Here to Stay."

Ars Frontiers kicked off Monday with a panel called "TikTok—Banned or Not, It's Probably Here to Stay," featuring experts on TikTok, data privacy, and cybersecurity.

It just so happened that the week before Ars Frontiers, TikTok was banned in Montana. This made the panel discussion particularly timely, as some TikTok creators and TikTok promptly sued the state, hoping to ensure that all Americans maintain access to the China-owned app—despite lawmakers' national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might use TikTok to access US user data.

Ars Frontiers 2023: "TikTok—Banned or Not, It's Probably Here to Stay."

An associate professor in the communication media and learning technologies design program at Teachers College, Columbia University, Ioana Literat monitors how young people use social media. She has been researching TikTok since it first became available in the US. Banning TikTok at the "apex of its popularity," Literat said, would set "a huge cultural and political precedent" for TikTok's young user base, which is so politically active on the app.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Blank-screen bug triggers first Vinfast VF8 recall

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

It didn't take long before it all went wrong for the crossover from Hai Phong. Vinfast, the startup automaker from Vietnam, just launched its VF8 battery EV here in the US, an event that generated plenty of negative press about the wildly inconsistent quality control evident among its test fleet. Now, the company has had to recall its first batch of BEVs due to a bug that can cause the car's display to go blank, taking out the speedo and warning lights in the process.

Ars drove the VF8 earlier this month and found a car that was not fully baked yet. But our experience on that test drive was better than that of many of our peers, who reported a litany of issues with its software, build quality, and, in some cases, handling.

This recall falls into the first of those categories. Vinfast says the first incident of a VF8 screen going blank occurred in late April. It then went digging for similar incidents and found four more customer reports of screens going blank. By mid-May—the day the VF8 reviews all went live, ironically—Vinfast decided to issue a recall to fix the problem.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The neurons that make you feel hangry

Enlarge (credit: warrenrandalcarr via Getty Images)

Maybe it starts with a low-energy feeling, or maybe you’re getting a little cranky. You might have a headache or difficulty concentrating. Your brain is sending you a message: You’re hungry. Find food.

Studies in mice have pinpointed a cluster of cells called AgRP neurons near the underside of the brain that may create this unpleasant hungry, even “hangry,” feeling. They sit near the brain’s blood supply, giving them access to hormones arriving from the stomach and fat tissue that indicate energy levels. When energy is low, they act on a variety of other brain areas to promote feeding.

By eavesdropping on AgRP neurons in mice, scientists have begun to untangle how these cells switch on and encourage animals to seek food when they’re low on nutrients, and how they sense food landing in the gut to turn back off. Researchers have also found that the activity of AgRP neurons goes awry in mice with symptoms akin to those of anorexia, and that activating these neurons can help to restore normal eating patterns in those animals.

Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

No one should be surprised Virgin Orbit failed—it had a terrible business plan

Branson dug the 747 aircraft acquired by Virgin Orbit. (credit: Eric Berger)

It's now official—the launch company Virgin Orbit is being sold for parts. In a new filing as part of the bankruptcy process, Rocket Lab purchased the company's main production facility in Long Beach, California, to support its Neutron rocket. Stratolaunch bought Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 aircraft and related equipment. And Launcher acquired the company's lease on a test site in Mojave.

That's it. After six years, Virgin Orbit is done, and its LauncherOne will fly no more. The purpose of this article is not to criticize the company's technology or employees. In truth, the engineering teams did a magnificent job of getting a liquid-fueled rocket to drop from a 747 aircraft, ignite its engine, and reach space.

No, the problem was Virgin Orbit's management, including Chief Executive Officer Dan Hart and its founder, Sir Richard Branson. Due to their leadership, the company had a terrible, unsupportable business plan and compounded those issues by hiring an unsustainable workforce of 700 people.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

How NASA plans to melt the Moon—and build on Mars

Enlarge / Mars Dune Alpha is the first structure built for NASA by the Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology team. (credit: ICON)

In June a four-person crew will enter a hangar at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and spend one year inside a 3D-printed building. Made of a slurry that—before it dried—looked like neatly laid lines of soft-serve ice cream, Mars Dune Alpha has crew quarters, shared living space, and dedicated areas for administering medical care and growing food. The 1,700-square-foot space, which is the color of Martian soil, was designed by architecture firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and 3D printed by Icon Technology.

Experiments inside the structure will focus on the physical and behavioral health challenges people will encounter during long-term residencies in space. But it’s also the first structure built for a NASA mission by the Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology (MMPACT) team, which is preparing now for the first construction projects on a planetary body beyond Earth.

When humanity returns to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, astronauts will first live in places like an orbiting space station, on a lunar lander, or in inflatable surface habitats. But the MMPACT team is preparing for the construction of sustainable, long-lasting structures. To avoid the high cost of shipping material from Earth, which would require massive rockets and fuel expenditures, that means using the regolith that’s already there, turning it into a paste that can be 3D printed into thin layers or different shapes.

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

BMW plays it safe with design of new electric sedan, the 2024 i5

Enlarge / The eighth-generation 5 Series has the least-outrageous styling we've seen from BMW in some time. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

BMW provided flights from DC to Milan and back, plus three nights in a hotel so we could get a preview of the new 5 Series and i5. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

COMO, ITALY—BMW has earned a reputation for challenging car designs. It's not a new thing, either. People mocked the Z1's disappearing doors. The Z3 coupe's "clown shoe" nickname was not at all affectionate. And few could find a kind word about the infamous "Bangle butt" on the fourth-gen 7 Series. But it doesn't take those kinds of risks with every model, particularly not the latest 5 Series, which now includes a fully electric i5.

The 5 Series is BMW's midsize sedan, and until the advent of the luxury SUV—a category that BMW basically invented—it was the company's bread and butter. There's a new 5 Series out this October, the eighth generation to bear the nameplate. Like other recent BMWs, it uses the manufacturer's latest flexible architecture that supports battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, and conventional powertrains, something we've seen to good effect with the 4 Series and particularly with last year's 7 Series and i7.

Now try to picture it wearing a taxi livery or perhaps a police version. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

The sedan is not dead

"We're particularly happy with how it turned out proportion-wise. I think it is a long, elegant, sporty sedan, and that, for me, is the essence of any BMW anyway. And the 5 series, of course, is the core of the brand in many, many markets," said Adrian van Hooydonk, design director at BMW Group.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Activision shuts down popular fan servers for legacy Call of Duty games

Prerelease video of Modern Warfare 2's SM2 mod, which has ceased development following an Activision cease-and-desist request.

Activision has sent cease-and-desist letters to two makers of popular fan clients for legacy Call of Duty titles in recent weeks. The move cuts off access to the many gameplay and quality-of-life improvements brought by these clients and stops what fans say is the only safe way to play these older games without the threat of damaging hacking by opponents.

The first victim of Activision's recent efforts was SM2, a major Modern Warfare 2 modding project whose development started over two years ago. Since then, the modding group has been working on updating that seminal 2009 release with new weapons, in-game perks, a redesigned UI, new streak and progression systems, and even a recent move to a more modern game engine.

Those efforts stopped last week, though, before the mod could even release its first version. The SM2 Twitter account reported that "a team member received a Cease & Desist letter on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the SM2 project. We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations permanently."

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ford reverses plan to ditch AM radio after congressional attention

Enlarge (credit: Ford)

Today is just an AM-tastic day, isn't it? Earlier this morning, we reported on industry pushback against congressional plans to mandate AM radios in all new cars. The topic has been building for some time now—Tesla and BMW dropped AM radio from new electric vehicles some years ago—but it made headlines again in February when Ford revealed that the 2024 Mustang would lose the ability to pick up AM. Well, Ford has changed the channel on its decision and will restore AM radio to its place on the dashboard.

The move was announced by Ford CEO Jim Farley, who took to Twitter with the news.

Although AM radio is mostly used by its adherents to listen to talk radio, sports, and local traffic, a bipartisan collection of Senators and Representatives introduced a bill last week to mandate the inclusion of AM radio in all new cars so they can receive messages in the case of an emergency. That argument evidently proved compelling:

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Congress wants AM radio in all new cars—trade groups say that’s a mistake

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

The fight over the future of AM radio got a little more heated this week as organizations representing the auto and technology industries told Congress that its plan to mandate this mode of radio wave reception is poorly conceived and will hinder progress.

AM radio has seen almost every other in-car entertainment option come and go—vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs—and it might predate just about everything other than playing "I Spy," but time is catching up with this old broadcast technology. It is starting to get left behind as new models—many of which are electric vehicles—drive off into the sunset, streaming their audio instead of modulating its amplitude.

When we reported on the news that AM would be absent from the 2024 Ford Mustang, we noted that some elected officials in Congress were not cool with retiring this kind of radio. Now some of them have gone a step further and introduced a bill—the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act"—that would require every new vehicle to include an AM radio receiver as standard equipment at no extra cost to the car buyer.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

End of an era: CD Baby stops distributing artists’ CDs, vinyl, and other goods

Enlarge / CD Baby no longer sells or distributes CDs but will help an artist figure out how much to charge for their discs. (credit: CD Baby)

CD Baby, an online indie music pioneer and the go-to place for indie music artists looking to get their music into storefronts, has told its customers that it will no longer distribute physical goods, like CDs, after June 22, 2023.

As seen on Twitter, on music blogs, and in its Help section, the Portland, Oregon-based distributor of independent music will continue to help artists get their music onto the digital stores of Spotify, Amazon, and Apple. But as of June 22, CD Baby will no longer warehouse, ship, or distribute CDs, vinyl, cassette tapes, or DVDs to Amazon or music wholesaler Alliance. Once artists with inventory in CD Baby's warehouse receive notice, they'll have 60 days to decide whether to get their inventory shipped back to them or have it recycled.

Like other services that date back to the late-1990s dot-com boom, CD Baby has gradually shifted away from its namesake offering. Launched from Woodstock, New York, in 1998 by Derek Sivers, it was one of the first web-based CD stores that focused on selling independent artists' work. By 2009, according to the company, physical sales through its store accounted for only 27 percent of the revenue it paid out to artists.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

SpaceX launches tenth crewed mission, third fully commercial flight

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches the Axiom-2 mission on May 21, 2023. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX on Sunday evening launched a commercial mission to the International Space Station carrying four people, including former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson.

This "Axiom-2" mission was commanded by Whitson and carried a paying customer named John Shoffner, who served as pilot, as well as two Saudi Arabian mission specialists, Ali al-Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. Shoffner and the government of Saudi Arabia procured the seats on Crew Dragon from Axiom, a Houston-based spaceflight company that brokered the mission to the space station. Whitson is an employee of Axiom.

The crew of four is flying the second fully private mission to the International Space Station and will spend about a week on board the orbiting laboratory before departing for Earth—weather permitting—on May 30.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

It feels like cheating: The Trek Domane+ SLR9 gravel bike, reviewed

Enlarge / The Trek Domane+ SLR9 with eTap before an epic ride. (credit: Eric Bangeman)

One of the things I love most about working at Ars Technica is the lunchtime bike rides. My home in the northwest suburbs of Chicago lies two miles from the Des Plaines River Trail and about three miles from the North Branch Trail. When the weather cooperates, I'm generally furiously pedaling through the woods on my Trek Checkpoint ALR 5 gravel bike.

So when Trek offered me the chance to ride its top-of-the-line Domane+ SLR 9 e-bike, I jumped at the opportunity. Yes, the weather can be dodgy during seasonal transitions, but I'd be facing the changing temps and gusting winds astride a carbon-frame gravel bike with carbon wheels… and a 50 Nm electric motor paired with a 360 Wh battery in the downtube.

But even as I picked up the Domane+ from a local bike shop, one question kept popping up. Why would I want to ride an electric road bike?

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ready the Ig Nobel: Researchers incorporate used diapers into concrete

Enlarge (credit: Renphoto)

Government building rules and regulations can be outdated and misguided, insisting upon conventional building materials with prices that aren’t compatible with building affordable housing. The building codes suggested by the United Nations decades ago often preclude using local, lower-cost, and environmentally friendly materials.

Of late, certain researchers have speculated that they might be able to solve two problems plaguing burgeoning cities—a glut of non-degradable waste and dearth of building materials—by folding the former into the latter. Now, a team in Japan reports that used, sanitized disposable diapers can be incorporated into concrete and mortar, which would still meet Indonesian building standards. Low-cost housing is desperately needed there as the urban population continues to bloom and housing is scarce. Obviously, all of the people moving to the cities bring more waste there, as well.

Diapers are substituted for the fine aggregates that are normally used in making concrete. The team determined that mortar for structural components, like load-bearing walls and public road pavement, could only tolerate a maximum of 10 percent added diaper material. But mortar and concrete for nonstructural components, like non-load-bearing wall partitions and low-impact floor pavers, could tolerate having up to 40 percent of their aggregates swapped for diaper material.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

When it comes to advanced math, ChatGPT is no star student

Enlarge (credit: Peter Dazeley)

While learning high-level mathematics is no easy feat, teaching math concepts can often be just as tricky. That may be why many teachers are turning to ChatGPT for help. According to a recent Forbes article, 51 percent of teachers surveyed stated that they had used ChatGPT to help teach, with 10 percent using it daily. ChatGPT can help relay technical information in more basic terms, but it may not always provide the correct solution, especially for upper-level math.

An international team of researchers tested what the software could manage by providing the generative AI program with challenging graduate-level mathematics questions. While ChatGPT failed on a significant number of them, its correct answers suggested that it could be useful for math researchers and teachers as a type of specialized search engine.

Portraying ChatGPT’s math muscles

The media tends to portray ChatGPT’s mathematical intelligence as either brilliant or incompetent. “Only the extremes have been emphasized,” explained Frieder Simon, a University of Oxford PhD candidate and the study’s lead author. For example, ChatGPT aced Psychology Today’s Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence IQ Test, scoring 147 points, but failed miserably on Accounting Today’s CPA exam. “There’s a middle [road] for some use cases; ChatGPT is performing pretty well [for some students and educators], but for others, not so much,” Simon elaborated.

Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Above the fold: The people behind the Gocycle G4 thought of everything

Enlarge (credit: John Timmer)

Foldable bikes offer a pretty obvious trade-off: the convenience of something you can easily pick up and store in the corner of an office or small apartment, but with some compromises in the cycling experience. Typically, putting a greater emphasis on one of those will mean sacrificing a bit on the other.

But e-bikes offer the possibility to sidestep some of that trade-off, boosting aspects of cycling performance without adding much in the way of added bulk. And the Gocycle G4 provides an excellent demonstration of how well that formula can work out, offering excellent performance in a thoughtfully designed package that is easy to pick up and lug around. It's not so good that it will completely replace a regular bike, but it comes a lot closer than I expected, and it has a number of brilliantly designed features.

All that said, the bike still has a couple of issues that temper my enthusiasm a bit.

Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Kia and Hyundai agree to $200M settlement for making cars viral theft targets

Enlarge / We used this image of an Ars staffer's stolen Hyundai to illustrate how common the thefts were in February 2022. Since then, one of this author's neighbors had a Kia broken into, and another had a joyride Hyundai ditched on his lawn after crashing through his fence. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Hyundai and Kia will pay out $200 million in a class-action lawsuit settlement, compensating roughly 9 million people for their losses after a 2022 social media trend revealed how relatively simple it was to steal certain models.

As reported by Reuters, $145 million of the payout goes to the out-of-pocket expenses of those whose cars were stolen. Many Kias made between 2011-2021, and Hyundais from 2015-2021, lacked electronic engine immobilizers, which would prevent a car from starting unless an electronically matched key was present. Without the immobilizer, the car could be started by turning the ignition with other objects, such as a USB-A cable that thieves discovered was a perfect fit.

Customers whose cars were totaled are eligible for up to $6,125, while damaged vehicles and property can receive a maximum of $3,375, along with costs for raised insurance, car rental, towing, tickets, and others. Kia and Hyundai had previously pledged to provide free software upgrades to vehicles and free wheel locks (i.e. The Club), typically in coordination with regional police departments. The NHTSA said in February that the companies have given out 26,000 wheel locks since November 2022.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Many of world’s biggest lakes in peril due to warming, drying climate

Enlarge / Aerial view of an abandoned boat on a desert at the site of former Lake Poopó, near Punaca Tinta Maria, Bolivia, taken on October 15, 2022. (credit: Martin Silva/AFP via Getty Images)

Water storage in many of the world’s biggest lakes has declined sharply in the last 30 years, according to a new study, with a cumulative drop of about 21.5 gigatons per year, an amount equal to the annual water consumption of the United States.

The loss of water in natural lakes can “largely be attributed to climate warming,” a team of scientists said as they published research today in Science that analyzed satellite data from 1,980 lakes and reservoirs between 1992 and 2020. When they combined the satellite images with climate data and hydrological models, they found “significant storage declines” in more than half of the bodies of water.

The combination of information from different sources also enabled the scientists to determine if the declines are related to climate factors, like increased evaporation and reduced river flows, or other impacts, including water diversions for agriculture or cities. A quarter of the world’s population lives in basins where lakes are drying up, they warned.

Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Lexus’ 2023 RZ 450e disappoints, offering poor EV range and a bumpy ride

Enlarge / This is Lexus' first battery-electric car, the RZ 450e. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

When Lexus started building luxury cars at the end of the 1980s, it took the rest of the auto industry a bit by surprise. Toyota wanted to show off that it could build the best car in the world, and the original Lexus LS400 was a credible effort to do just that. Three decades on, Lexus now has its first battery-electric vehicle. BEVs are Lexus' future—it wants to sell a million of them by 2030, starting with this car, the 2023 RZ 450e. But don't expect this electric Lexus to make the same kind of splash as the LS400 did—this is not a car that's going to challenge for best in class.

It is fair to say that the industry-wide shift to battery-electric vehicles has caught out the world's largest automaker. Toyota was an early front-runner when it came to electrification with hybrid powertrains—the Prius is now in its sixth iteration and has sold millions—but it has been much more cautious when it comes to BEVs. There was an early dalliance with the RAV4 EV, which showed up in small numbers in the US before being cancelled in 2002, and then not much until very recently. Now Toyota has developed its first modern BEV, using lithium-ion (rather than nickel-metal hydride), called the bZ4x. There's a badge-engineered Subaru version, too, and this Lexus variant as well.

Design

Instead of starting with a clean-sheet design, like rival Volkswagen Group, Toyota decided to modify its existing modular vehicle architecture (called TNGA) to allow it to make BEVs (the new architecture is known as e-TNGA). I was going to write that it's a relatively small crossover by 2023 standards until I checked the dimensions against other EVs; at 189.2 inches (4,806 mm) it's actually longer than a Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volkswagen ID.4, or Jaguar I-Pace—perhaps the RZ 450e's closest spiritual competitor. (It's a pretty average 74 inches/1,880 mm wide and 64.4 inches/1,636 mm tall.)

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Pixel 8 Pro’s mystery sensor is… a temperature sensor?

• 

  The Pixel 8 Pro. Just look at that new camera bar.

When the first Pixel 8 Pro renders leaked, the primary point of speculation revolved around the camera layout. Besides the usual three cameras and an LED flash, what in the world was the second circle of sensor clusters right under the LED flash? Some people let their imaginations run wild and thought it was a LiDAR sensor; we figured Google was just rearranging things like the laser-autofocus array. The real answer turns out to be weirder than either of those options.

Android researcher Kuba Wojciechowski, the same person who scored the first live video of the Pixel Fold, now has the first live video of the Pixel 8 Pro, hosted over at 91mobiles. The video appears to be an internal Google demonstration showing off the main new feature of the Pixel 8 Pro: a temperature sensor. If you remember back to the start of the pandemic, some Chinese manufacturers came up with the idea of a smartphone-mounted forehead temperature sensor. Now it looks like Google is going down that road three years later.

The video features a prototype Pixel 8 Pro with a telltale identifying pattern on the back of the phone, which we've seen on many Google prototypes. The camera bar features the same layout as OnLeaks' earlier render, with all the cameras in a single pill-shaped cutout. The video indicates that the temperature sensor is the white circle. The 91mobiles report says the sensor is an infrared thermometer and similar to what most contactless thermometers use. You take your temperature by putting the back of the phone "as close as possible" to your forehead without touching it, and then, over four seconds, swipe the phone across your forehead to the temple. It looks like a lot of work and easy to mess up.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

It’s a Raspberry Pi, a BlackBerry keyboard, and a battery: It’s the Beepberry

Enlarge / Messaging in the front, GPIO playground in the back (classic yellow/silver battery included, but not shown). (credit: Beepberry/Beeper/SQFMI)

Some people, for whatever reason, don't always love having their messages arrive on the same device that's also their bank, their news source, their subway fare, and their camera. For those people—and for those who just love a bizarre little computer—Eric Migicovsky has "a little side project" for you: Beepberry.

Beepberry is the fusion of a backlit BlackBerry Classic keyboard (with the logo button and all) and mini-touchpad, a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and a Sharp Memory LCD 400x240 screen—the kind of e-paper e-paper-like screen you'd commonly see on programming calculators. It's meant to be used with Beeper, the all-in-one chat service that can also relay SMS, including iMessage (typically through signing in to a Mac server remotely; more on that in Beeper's FAQ). It's available now for preorder for $99 if you want a Pi Zero W included and for $79 if you already have one you're willing to fuse in. You'll also need an SD card.

All the nifty stuff accessible on this $80/$100 devkit device. (credit: Beepberry/Beeper/SQFMI)

In a Twitter thread, Migicovsky, co-founder of Beeper and creator of the pioneering Pebble smartwatch, wrote that he wanted a "weekend device" that kept him in touch but didn't lead him into typical smartphone distractions. "I imagined a tiny, hackable e-paper screen with a physical keyboard, powered by a Raspberry Pi, useful to chat around my home…and pretty much nothing else," Migicovsky tweeted.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Montana is first state to ban TikTok over national security concerns

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

Montana became the first state to ban TikTok yesterday. In a press release, the state's Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, said the move was a necessary step to keep Montanans safe from Chinese Communist Party surveillance. The ban will take effect on January 1, 2024.

"The Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok to spy on Americans, violate their privacy, and collect their personal, private, and sensitive information is well-documented,” Gianforte said. “Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.”

Prior to signing Montana Senate Bill 419 into law, critics reported that banning TikTok in the state would likely be both technically and legally unfeasible. Technically, since Montana doesn't control all Internet access in the state, the ban may be difficult to enforce. And legally, it must hold up to First Amendment scrutiny, because Montanans should have the right to access information and express themselves using whatever communications tool they prefer.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Truckers are caught on the front lines of California’s EV push

Enlarge / Trucks at the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. (credit: Allison Zaucha/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

If you live in the US, the stuff you buy—that new dining room table, bag of rice, or pair of pants heading to your home right now—may experience the all-electric future of global transportation before you do.

Tens of millions of tons of goods move through California’s ports each year, proceeding from ship to port and beyond on hulking semitrucks. Forty percent of the nation’s containerized imports move through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach alone, vital links in a global chain of commerce connecting factories all over the world to American doorsteps.

Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Nvidia introduces $399 RTX 4060 Ti and $299 4060 without introducing a price hike

Enlarge / Nvidia's RTX 4060 lineup. It's not listed here, but the regular 4060 will be launching at $299. (credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia is beginning to roll out its new Ada Lovelace GPU architecture to sub-$500 graphics cards, the models that the vast majority of PC gamers buy and use. There's good news and bad news.

The good news is that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti will launch on May 24 for $399, the same price that the RTX 3060 Ti launched for in December 2020—it's the first GPU launch in ages not to come with a price hike built in. Like other RTX 4000-series GPUs, it supports DLSS 3's AI-assisted frame rate-boosting technologies and AV1 video encoding support, and it's much more power-efficient than its predecessors. The bad news is that the 4060 Ti is an unusually mild upgrade over the 3060 Ti, with the same 8GB bank of RAM and (according to Nvidia) just 15 percent faster performance than the 3060 Ti in games without the DLSS Frame Generation feature enabled.

• 

  When DLSS FG is out of the picture, the 4060 Ti is about 15 percent faster than a 3060 Ti. Obviously comparisons against older cards will be even better, and most people choose not to upgrade their GPU every single generation. [credit: Nvidia ]

Nvidia will sell a Founders Edition version of the 4060 Ti that looks about the same size as its Founders Edition RTX 4070; it also uses Nvidia's 12VHPWR connector, though cards from Nvidia's partners will often opt to use a traditional 8-pin power connector instead.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Poll: 61% of Americans say AI threatens humanity’s future

Enlarge / An AI-generated image of "real space invaders" threatening the earth. (credit: Midjourney)

A majority of Americans believe that the rise of artificial intelligence technology could put humanity's future in jeopardy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday. The poll found that over two-thirds of respondents are anxious about the adverse effects of AI, while 61 percent consider it a potential threat to civilization.

The online poll, conducted from May 9 to May 15, sampled the opinions of 4,415 US adults. It has a credibility interval (a measure of accuracy) of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The poll results come amid the expansion of generative AI use in education, government, medicine, and business, triggered in part by the explosive growth of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is reportedly the fastest-growing software application of all time. The application's success has set off a technology hype race among tech giants such as Microsoft and Google, who stand to benefit from having something new and buzzy to potentially increase their share prices.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

This is catfishing on an industrial scale

Enlarge (credit: Emilija Manevska/Getty Images)

This wasn’t supposed to happen. In 2020, in a house surrounded by fields in the Irish countryside, Liam, 19, sat at his laptop, an energy drink fizzing at his elbow. He leaned in for a better look at the profile photo and, sure enough, saw the face of an old rugby friend looking back at him.

Just weeks earlier, Liam, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, had been living in Waterford, in Southeast Ireland, about to start his second year at university. Then Covid-19 shut down the city and his university’s campus. On any Saturday on the main street, there were now more pigeons than people. Pubs and cafés shut their doors, and job opportunities dried up. “Money-wise it was worrying,” he says.

Increasingly concerned, Liam responded to a Facebook ad for a “freelance customer support representative,” working remotely for vDesk, a company based in Cyprus. He was invited to an online interview. At the end of the call, the interviewer asked how he would feel about moderating dating websites.

Read 46 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Elon Musk doubles-down on Tesla robotaxis in TV interview

Enlarge / The Tesla Cybertruck during a tour of the Elkhorn Battery Energy Storage System in Moss Landing, California, on Monday, June 6, 2022. This week, Musk said that it would go into production this year, with an annual rate of between 250,000-500,000 vehicles. (credit: Nic Coury/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Tuesday afternoon, after the close of the stock market, Tesla held its annual meeting. Tesla CEO Elon Musk told rapturous attendees that 2023 would finally see the Cybertruck go into production and that an example of the angular stainless-steel pickup would be his daily driver. He also confirmed some previously reported facts, like a move to reduce silicon carbide power electronics in drive units, then gave a presentation on the company's humanoid robotics program.

Following the annual meeting, Musk sat down for an interview with David Faber on CNBC. In the interview, Musk was questioned on a number of topics concerning Tesla.

TV spots for Tesla commercials?

During Tesla's annual meeting, and in response to shareholders, Musk conceded that perhaps Tesla should engage in more formal advertising.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Dealmaster: Savings on tech gift ideas for dads and grads

From discounts on a new TV to deals on smart grills, our latest Dealmaster is curated to help Arsians kick off the summer. And with June quickly approaching, if you're not shopping for yourself this time around, the tech we've included in our list would also make for fun, thoughtful gifts for the dad or grad in your life.

TVs and screens

Samsung Neo QLED 4K QN95B. (credit: Samsung)

• Samsung 75-inch Neo QLED 8K TV for $6,000 (was $6,300) at Samsung
• Samsung 50-inch The Frame QLED 4K TV for $1,100 (was $1,300) at Samsung
• Samsung 65-inch QN85B QLED 4K for $1,200 (was $2,000) at Samsung
• Samsung 50-inch Q80C QLED 4K TV for $950 (was $1,000) at Samsung
• Sony 75-inch Bravia XR90K 4K TV for $1,400 (was $1,700) at Best Buy
• LG 55-inch Class 80 QNED 4K TV for $700 (was $800) at Best Buy
• Sony 55-inch Class X75K 4K TV for $450 (was $500) at Best Buy

Toys and games

A Lego Succulents set is the perfect way to spruce up your desk if you don't have a green thumb. (credit: Lego)

• Lego Icons Bonsai Tree for $40 (was $50) at Amazon
• Lego Icons Succulents for $40 (was $50) at Amazon
• Lego Technic Bugatti Bolide Racing Car for $41 (was $50) at Amazon
• Lego Architecture Statue of Liberty for $96 (was $120) at Amazon
• Lego Art World Map for $220 (was $250) at Amazon
• Super Smash Bros for Nintendo Switch for $50 (was $60) at Amazon
• Sonic Mania + Team Sonic Racing for Nintendo Switch for $30 (was $40) at Amazon
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe for $50 (was $60) at Amazon
• Harvestella for Nintendo Switch for $38 (was $50) at Amazon

Microsoft Surface laptops

Microsoft's Surface Pro 9. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

• Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with Intel Core i7 and 256GB storage for $1,400 (was $1,600) at Best Buy
• Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with Intel Core i5 and 256GB storage for $1,000 (was $1,100) at Best Buy
• Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with Microsoft SQ3 and 512GB storage for $1,600 (was $1,900) at Best Buy
• Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 15-inch with AMD Ryzen 7 and 256GB storage for $900 (was $1,200) at Best Buy
• Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 15-inch with Intel Core i7 and 512GB storage for $1,500 (was $1,800) at Best Buy
• Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 with Intel Core i5 and 128GB storage for $600 (was $700) at Best Buy
• Microsoft Surface Go 3 with Intel Pentium Gold and 128GB storage for $500 (was $550) at Best Buy

Wearables, smartwatches, trackers, and accessories

(credit: Garmin)

• Garmin Instinct 2 45 mm watch for $250 (was $350) at Best Buy
• Garmin Venu Sq 4 mm watch for $120 (was $200) at Best Buy
• Garmin Forerunner 45 mm watch for $130 (was $170) at Best Buy
• Garmin Venu 2 Plus 43 mm watch for $400 (was $450) at Best Buy
• Garmin Instinct 2S Solar 40 mm watch for $350 (was $450) at Best Buy
• Belkin BoostCharge Pro Fast Charger for Apple Watch for $55 (was $60) at Best Buy
• Belkin MagSafe 3-in-1 wireless charging stand for $127 (was $150) at Best Buy

Health, home, and personal care

Dyson V15 Detect Absolute. (credit: Chuong Nguyen)

• Sonicare ExpertClean 7300 electric toothbrush for $140 (was $160) at Best Buy
• Oral-B Pro 1000 electric toothbrush for $53 (was $70) at Best Buy
• Braun Series 9 wet/dry electric shaver for $270 (was $300) at Best Buy
• Philips Norelco Shaver 7600 for $125 (was $140) at Best Buy
• Philips Norelco 9000 Prestige Shaver for $330 (was $350) at Best Buy
• Dyson Pure Cool Purifying Fan TP01 for $300 (was $400) at Best Buy
• Dyson V15 Detect cordless vacuum for $650 (was $750) at Best Buy
• Dyson Purifier Cool TP07 for $470 (was $570) at Best Buy
• Dyson V12 Detect Slim cordless vacuum for $550 (was $650) at Best Buy

Grills and cooking

• Weber Genesis E-325s liquid propane grill for $899 (was $999) at Best Buy
• Weber Genesis EX-325s natural gas grill for $1,079 (was $1,179) at Best Buy
• Weber Genesis SX-335 propane gas grill for $1,499 (was $1,599) at Best Buy
• Weber Genesis S-335 natural gas grill for $1,329 (was $1,429) at Best Buy
• George Foreman 9-serving indoor grill for $58 (was $64) at Amazon
• Yedi Total Package 6-in-1 indoor grill for $129 (was $150) at Amazon
• George Foreman Beyond Grill for $88 (was $99) at Amazon
• Ninja OG701 woodfire outdoor grill for $300 (was $370) at Amazon
• Ninja Professional Plus blender for $100 (was $120) at Best Buy

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

NBC pays $110 million to make an NFL playoff game a Peacock exclusive

Enlarge / The San Francisco 49ers new star quarterback Brock Purdy celebrates during a blowout 35-7 win over the Tom Brady-led Buccaneers. (credit: Getty Images/Thearon W. Henderson)

As the NFL slowly embraces streaming, football addicts are quickly hitting subscription fatigue. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the latest service to carve out a piece of the upcoming NFL season is NBCUniversal’s $5-per-month Peacock streaming service. Peacock is getting an exclusive NFL playoff game that won't be available anywhere other than through the online service.

The Wall Street Journal's sources say NBCUniversal paid $110 million for the rights to air one of the coveted 13 NFL playoff games. The service's exclusive game will be in the prime time slot on Saturday, January 13, making it one of the round 1 "Wild Card" matchups. Naturally, we don't know which teams are playing yet, but the two team's local markets will see the playoff game simulcast on the local NBC affiliate. Only the national viewers will have to deal with Peacock.

NBC has been trying to turn Peacock into a sports destination and recently said it will be the "primary platform" for the 2024 Olympic games.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” sees pedestrian, chooses not to slow down

Enlarge / This Tesla can clearly detect the pedestrian as they appear on the infotainment display. But the car continues past them, only slowing from 26 mph to 24 mph after it passes the crosswalk. California law requires drivers to come to a complete stop for pedestrians at crosswalks. (credit: Twitter/Whole Mars Blog)

Tesla released a new version of its controversial "Full Self-Driving Beta" software last month. Among the updates in version 11.4 are new algorithms determining the car's behavior around pedestrians. But alarmingly, a video posted to Twitter over the weekend shows that although the Tesla system can see pedestrians crossing the road, a Tesla can choose not to stop or even slow down as it drives past.

The video was posted by the Whole Mars Catalog account, a high-profile pro-Tesla account with more than 300,000 followers. The tweet, which has been viewed 1.7 million times, featured a five-second video clip with the accompanying text:

One of the most bullish / exciting things I've seen on Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta 11.4.1.

It detected the pedestrian, but rather than slamming on the brakes it just proceeded through like a human would knowing there was enough time to do so.

The person posting the video then clarified that it was filmed in San Francisco and that anyone not OK with this driving behavior must be unfamiliar with city life. (As someone who has lived in big cities all his life, I am definitely not OK with cars not stopping for pedestrians at a crosswalk.)

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Cargo, passengers, even campers—Mercedes-Benz has a new EV van platform

Enlarge / We know you love the idea of electric camper vans, and it seems so does Mercedes-Benz Vans. (credit: Mercedes-Benz)

Mercedes-Benz Vans is on the verge of launching its next big thing. On Tuesday, the luxury carmaker’s Vans division detailed a new fully scalable electric vehicle architecture, called Van.EA, which is expected to bear fruit in 2026. From midsize luxury vans to full-size cargo and camper vans, Mercedes-Benz says Van.EA will provide extremely versatile bones.

"We will merge our midsize and large vans onto one platform," Mathias Geisen, head of Mercedes-Benz Vans, told reporters during a press conference on Monday. "That wasn't possible in the past."

How will that work? Basically, Van.EA will consist of three main parts. Up front, a common axle and electric drive unit will be shared across all Van.EA vehicles. The middle section will be the most flexible, with different lengths and battery sizes depending on the type of van. Finally, two rear-end options will be offered: one with an electric drive motor, for a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup, and one without this extra power unit, for front-wheel-drive vehicles.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Microsoft is scanning the inside of password-protected zip files for malware

Enlarge

Microsoft cloud services are scanning for malware by peeking inside users’ zip files, even when they’re protected by a password, several users reported on Mastodon on Monday.

Compressing file contents into archived zip files has long been a tactic threat actors use to conceal malware spreading through email or downloads. Eventually, some threat actors adapted by protecting their malicious zip files with a password the end user must type when converting the file back to its original form. Microsoft is one-upping this move by attempting to bypass password protection in zip files and, when successful, scanning them for malicious code.

While analysis of password-protected in Microsoft cloud environments is well-known to some people, it came as a surprise to Andrew Brandt. The security researcher has long archived malware inside password-protected zip files before exchanging them with other researchers through SharePoint. On Monday, he took to Mastodon to report that the Microsoft collaboration tool had recently flagged a zip file, which had been protected with the password “infected.”

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Exploding airbag inflators strike again—1 million GM SUVs are recalled

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

There's another massive airbag safety scandal brewing. Last week, General Motors issued a recall for almost a million SUVs in order to replace potentially dangerous airbag inflators, the third such recall it has had to issue for this problem.

Many vehicles from other OEMs (including BMW, Hyundai Motor Group, and Stellantis) may also contain the same inflators, which can rupture during inflation, spraying shrapnel during a crash. But the supplier that manufactured the airbag inflators has rejected claims by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that there is a systematic defect.

The airbag inflators in question were manufactured by ARC Automotive, a tier-two automotive supplier based in Knoxville, Tennessee, and NHTSA has had an inkling of the problem for some years now. In fact, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation started a preliminary evaluation in 2015 of ARC's airbag inflators and whether they could rupture dangerously, following two reports of people suffering shrapnel injuries during a crash when their driver's airbag deployed.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

US states’ social media laws to protect kids create challenges for platforms

Enlarge (credit: Financial Times/Getty Images)

Social media platforms are struggling to navigate a patchwork of US state laws that require them to verify users’ ages and give parents more control over their children’s accounts.

States including Utah and Arkansas have already passed child social media laws in recent weeks, and similar proposals have been put forward in other states, such as Louisiana, Texas, and Ohio. The legislative efforts are designed to address fears that online platforms are harming the mental health and wellbeing of children and teens amid a rise in teen suicide in the US.

But critics—including the platforms themselves, as well as some children’s advocacy groups—argue the measures are poorly drafted and fragmented, potentially leading to a raft of unintended consequences.

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A private company has an audacious plan to rescue NASA’s last “Great Observatory”

Enlarge / An artist's conception of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in deep space. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A Delta II rocket launched the Spitzer Space Telescope two decades ago, boosting it to an Earth-trailing orbit, where it drifted away from our planet at a rate of about 15 million kilometers a year. It was the last of NASA's four "Great Observatories" put into space from 1990 to 2003.

Over its planned five-year lifetime, the infrared space telescope performed its job well, helping astronomers discover newly forming stars, observe exoplanets, and study galaxies. After more than seven years, as anticipated by scientists, the on-board supply of liquid helium ran out. Without this coolant, some of Spitzer's scientific instruments were unavailable. So its operators switched to "warm mission" mode, taking data from two of its shortwave channels.

The space telescope continued operating until about three years ago, at which point the spacecraft began to overheat whenever it needed to point back toward Earth for communications. By this time, as it drifted farther from Earth, it was close to being on the opposite side of the Sun. This meant that operating the telescope, and having it phone home from time to time, would irreparably damage Spitzer's remaining scientific instruments.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments