TSMC says some of its data was swept up in a hack on a hardware supplier

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Chipmaker TSMC said on Friday that one of its hardware suppliers experienced a “security incident” that allowed the attackers to obtain configurations and settings for some of the servers the company uses in its corporate network. The disclosure came a day after the LockBit ransomware crime syndicate listed TSMC on its extortion site and threatened to publish the data unless it received a payment of $70 million.

The hardware supplier, Kinmax Technology, confirmed that one of its test environments had been attacked by an external group, which was then able to retrieve configuration files and other parameter information. The company said it learned of the breach on Thursday and immediately shut down the compromised systems and notified the affected customer.

“Since the above information has nothing to do with the actual application of the customer, it is only the basic setting at the time of shipment,” Kinmax officials wrote. “At present, no damage has been caused to the customer, and the customer has not been hacked by it.”

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Red Hats new source code policy and the intense pushback explained

Enlarge / A be-hatted person, tipping his brim to the endless amount of text generated by the conflict of corporate versus enthusiast understandings of the GPL. (credit: Getty Images)

When CentOS announced in 2020 that it was shutting down its traditional "rebuild" of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to focus on its development build, Stream, CentOS suggested the strategy "removes confusion." Red Hat, which largely controlled CentOS by then, considered it "a natural, inevitable next step."

Last week, the IBM-owned Red Hat continued "furthering the evolution of CentOS Stream" by announcing that CentOS Stream would be "the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases," with RHEL's core code otherwise restricted to a customer portal. (RHEL access is free for individual developers and up to 16 servers, but that's largely not what is at issue here).

Red Hat's post was a rich example of burying the lede and a decisive moment for many who follow the tricky balance of Red Hat's open-source commitments and service contract business. Here's what followed.

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FTC prepares the big one a major lawsuit targeting Amazons core business

Enlarge / FTC Chair Lina Khan testifies during a House subcommittee hearing on the agency's fiscal 2024 budget on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams )

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to file a major antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of "leverag[ing] its power to reward online merchants that use its logistics services and punish those who don't," Bloomberg reported today. Bloomberg described the forthcoming lawsuit as "the big one," following several earlier lawsuits filed by the FTC under Chair Lina Khan.

"In the coming weeks, the agency plans to file a far-reaching antitrust suit focused on Amazon's core online marketplace, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and three people familiar with the case," the report said.

Khan may try to force Amazon to "restructure" its business. "Based on her public comments, Khan is unlikely to accept compromises from Amazon and could seek to restructure the company—a dramatic outcome that Amazon would surely appeal," Bloomberg wrote.

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Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didnt quite pan out

Enlarge / Let's look deep within. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

I've been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey—I'm just going to use "Mastodon" as shorthand here; purists can bite me) for over a year now and have been doing so full time for about six months, following Elon Musk buying Twitter (since on principle, I decline to give Elon Musk money or attention). This latter part coincided with the "November 2022 influx," when lots of new people joined Mastodon for similar reasons. A lot of that influx has not stuck around. Everyone is very aware at this point that active user numbers of Mastodon have dropped off a cliff.

I have evidence of this. I recently shut down my Mastodon instance that I started in November, mastodon.bloonface.com, and (as is proper) it sent out about 700,000 kill messages to inform other instances that it had federated with that it was going offline for good and to delete all record of it from their databases. Around 25 percent of these were returned undelivered because the instances had simply dropped offline. These are people and organizations who were engaged with Mastodon and fediverse to the point of investing real time and resources into it but simply dropped out without a trace sometime between November 2022 and now. I know multiple people who tried it and then gave up due to a lack of engagement with what they were posting, a lack of people to follow, an inability to deal with the platform's technical foibles, or, worse, because they found the experience actively unpleasant. Something has gone badly wrong.

There are some good reasons for this that really point to both shortcomings in the whole idea and also how Mastodon is and was sold to potential new users, some of which might be uncomfortable for existing Mastodon users to hear. There are some conclusions to draw from it, some of which might also be uncomfortable, but some which actually might be seen as reassuring to those who quite liked the place as it was pre-November and would prefer it if it would go back to that.

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Bransons Virgin Galactic to fly its first customers to space today

Enlarge / Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity rocket plane takes off under the fuselage of its carrier aircraft in this photo from a previous test flight. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

Virgin Galactic is preparing for its first commercial flight to the edge of space on Thursday, with three Italian researchers set to ride a rocket plane on a government-sponsored suborbital research mission over New Mexico alongside three Virgin employees.

The milestone mission comes after more than a decade of test flights of Virgin Galactic’s air-launched rocket-powered vehicles and will be the company’s sixth flight to travel higher than 50 miles (80 kilometers), the boundary of space recognized by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Virgin Galactic plans to livestream the commercial flight beginning at 11 am EDT (1500 UTC). The company’s large carrier jet, called VMS Eve, will take off from a runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico and climb to an altitude of about 45,000 feet, where it will release the VSS Unity rocket plane to ignite its motor and start the climb to suborbital space.

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Developer claims Steam is rejecting games with AI-generated artwork

Can you tell which of these seemingly identical bits of Steam iconography were generated using AI (trick question, it's none of them). (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Valve has reportedly become the latest company to react to the uncertain legal landscape surrounding AI-generated artwork by simply barring its use in submitted materials. An anonymous developer going by the Reddit handle potterharry97 reports having a Steam game page submission rejected for the use of "art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties."

Potterharry97 originally posted about the rejection in a May post on the now-private GameDev subreddit (partially archived here, Google Cache here). In that post, potterharry97 admitted that "a large portion of the assets have some AI involvement in its creation" through the use of Stable Diffusion. In a follow-up post this month on the AIGameDev subreddit, potterharry97 wrote that the initial submission was intended as an early placeholder version, "with 2-3 assets/sprites that were admittedly obviously AI generated from the hands."

That "obvious" use of AI art tools apparently set off some alarm bells with a Valve moderator, who reportedly replied that Valve had "identified intellectual property... which appears to belongs to one or more third parties. In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties."

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Linda Yaccarinos vision for Twitter 2.0 emerges

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Thomas Trutschel )

Twitter’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, is preparing a series of measures to bring back advertisers who had abandoned the platform under Elon Musk’s ownership, including introducing a video ads service, wooing more celebrities and raising headcount.

The former NBCUniversal advertising head, who started as chief executive on June 5, is seeking to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that would be shown to users scrolling through Twitter’s new short-video feed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Yaccarino also plans to meet media partners, publishers and talent agencies in a bid to bring celebrities, political figures and other content creators to the platform.

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NANOGrav hears hum of gravitational wave background louder than expected

Enlarge / In this artist’s interpretation, a pair of supermassive black holes (top left) emits gravitational waves that ripple through the fabric of space-time. Those gravitational waves compress and stretch the paths of radio waves emitted by pulsars (white). (credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav Collaboration)

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, first detected in 2015. But an expected corresponding low-frequency gravitational wave background—a kind of "hum" comprised of a chorus of gravitational waves, most likely emanating from binary pairs of supermassive black holes—has proven more elusive. Now the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has announced the first evidence of this gravitational wave background. The results and related analyses are described in several new papers published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The collaboration stopped short of claiming outright detection, opting to describe their results instead as strong evidence of the expected gravitational wave background. That said, "In our statistical analyses, there's a less than 1-in-1,000 chance of nature giving our results without gravitational waves being present," NANOGrav chair Stephen Taylor of Vanderbilt University said during a press briefing.

As previously reported, LIGO detects gravitational waves via laser interferometry, using high-powered lasers to measure tiny changes in the distance between two objects positioned kilometers apart. LIGO has detectors in Hanford, Washington, and in Livingston, Louisiana. (A third detector in Italy, Advanced VIRGO, came online in 2016.) On September 14, 2015, at 5:51 am ET, both detectors picked up signals within milliseconds of each other for the very first time—direct evidence for two black holes spiraling inward toward each other and merging in a massive collision event that sent powerful shockwaves across spacetime. That first direct detection was announced on February 11, 2016, spawned headlines worldwide, snagged the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, and officially launched a new era of so-called "multi-messenger" astronomy.

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Fears grow of deepfake ID scams following Progress hack

Enlarge / The number of deepfakes used in scams in just the first three months of 2023 outstripped all of 2022. (credit: FT Montage/Getty Images)

When Progress Corp, the Massachusetts-based maker of business software, revealed its file transfer system had been compromised this month, the issue quickly gathered global significance.

A Russian-speaking gang dubbed Cl0p had used the vulnerability to steal sensitive information from hundreds of companies including British Airways, Shell and PwC. It had been expected that the hackers would then attempt to extort affected organizations, threatening to release their data unless a ransom was paid.

However, cyber security experts said that the nature of the data stolen in the attack—including the driving licenses, health and pension information of millions of Americans—hints at another way hackers would cash in: ID theft scams, which combined with the latest in so-called deepfake software may prove even more lucrative than extorting companies.

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GeForce RTX 4060 review: Not thrilling but a super-efficient $299 workhorse

Enlarge / PNY's take on the basic $299 version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Nvidia's GeForce 1060, 2060, and 3060 graphics cards are some of the most widely used GPUs in all of PC gaming. Four of Steam's top five GPUs are 60-series cards, and the only one that isn't is an even lower-end GTX 1650.

All of this is to say that, despite all the fanfare for high-end products like the RTX 4090, the new GeForce RTX 4060 is Nvidia's most important Ada Lovelace-based GPU. History suggests that it will become a baseline for game developers to aim for and the go-to recommendation for most entry-level-to-mainstream PC gaming builds.

The RTX 4060, which launches this week starting at $299, is mostly up to the task. It's faster and considerably more power efficient than the 3060 it replaces, and it doesn't come with the same generation-over-generation price hike as the higher-end Lovelace GPUs. It's also a solid value compared to the 4060 Ti, typically delivering between 80 and 90 percent of the 4060 Ti's performance for 75 percent of the money.

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The Linux coders turning the ROG Ally and other handhelds into Steam Deck clones

Enlarge / SteamOS on the Asus ROG Ally, the hard (but kinda fun) way. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

As soon as I was done with my review of the Asus ROG Ally, I grabbed my best USB stick and started looking for ISOs to download.

Windows is, of course, the main highway to most PC gaming, but it's also (as detailed in the review) not yet built to work well on a 7-inch gaming handheld. The ROG Ally ships with Windows (Home) installed and a bunch of Asus software, but it is still, at heart, a PC. With effort, you can get into the BIOS, disable Secure Boot, plug in a USB stick, and boot a USB stick with a live Linux distribution on it.

It's a weird feeling, ignoring almost everything Asus has done to set up this device with gaming and power management software and starting over at the storage level. But, like the many Linux developers who see the Ally as the Steam Deck's potentially beefier cousin, I wanted to leave the comforts of the Start menu for wilder lands.

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Malaria spreading in Texas and Florida; first US-based cases in two decades

Enlarge

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning doctors to be on the lookout for malaria cases after five people who had not traveled outside of the country fell ill with locally acquired infections in Texas and Florida. In a health alert Monday evening, the agency expressed concern that the country could see a rise in imported cases due to increased international travel this summer.

The Florida and Texas cases are the first locally acquired malaria infections in the US since 2003, the agency highlighted.

So far, there have been four cases in Florida's Sarasota County and one case in Texas' Cameron County, which sits at the state's far eastern border with Mexico, where malaria is endemic. There is no indication that the Florida cases and the Texas case are linked in any way. The four infected people in Florida, who have all since recovered, were in close geographic proximity to each other, and the Texas case occurred in a person who spent time working outdoors.

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Twitter gets buggier: Followers dont display users restricted in error

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Since the earliest days of Twitter, the easiest way to find out more about an account was to look beyond its tweets and dig deeper into who follows that account and who that account is following. Now, users are discovering that Twitter seems to either be glitching or intentionally limiting access to the complete lists of any given user's followers or who they are following.

Ars easily replicated the error by clicking on various accounts and finding that Twitter only showed a partial list of accounts a user follows or is following. For Twitter owner Elon Musk's account, for example, instead of seeing all 339 accounts he follows, Twitter only showed 64 accounts. Currently, it seems that users can only review complete lists of their own followers and following lists.

It's likely that Twitter is simply glitching, but it's possible that the company is planning to restrict who can view an account's followers and following lists, potentially reserving that privilege for paid subscribers someday. Earlier this month, the @TitterDaily account confirmed that the ability to direct message accounts that don't follow you would be restricted to paid Twitter subscribers.

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Prominent cryptocurrency exchange infected with previously unseen Mac malware

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Researchers have discovered previously unknown Mac malware infecting a cryptocurrency exchange. It contains a full suite of capabilities, including the ability to steal private data and download and execute new malicious files.

Dubbed JokerSpy, the malware is written in the Python programming language and makes use of an open-source tool known as SwiftBelt, which is designed for legitimate security professionals to test their networks for vulnerabilities. JokerSpy first came to light earlier this month in this post from security firm Bitdefender. Researchers for the company said they identified Windows and Linux components, suggesting that versions exist for those platforms as well.

Five days later, researchers for security firm Elastic reported that the diagnostic endpoint protection tool they sell had detected xcc, a binary file that’s part of JokerSpy. Elastic didn’t identify the victim other than to say it was a “prominent Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.”

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Supreme Court rejects Genius lawsuit claiming Google stole song lyrics

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | BushAlex)

The song lyrics website Genius' allegations that Google "stole" its work in violation of a contract will not be heard by the US Supreme Court. The top US court denied Genius' petition for certiorari in an order list issued today, leaving in place lower-court rulings that went in Google's favor.

Genius previously lost rulings in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. In August 2020, US District Judge Margo Brodie ruled that Genius' claim is preempted by the US Copyright Act. The appeals court upheld the ruling in March 2022.

"Plaintiff's argument is, in essence, that it has created a derivative work of the original lyrics in applying its own labor and resources to transcribe the lyrics, and thus, retains some ownership over and has rights in the transcriptions distinct from the exclusive rights of the copyright owners... Plaintiff likely makes this argument without explicitly referring to the lyrics transcriptions as derivative works because the case law is clear that only the original copyright owner has exclusive rights to authorize derivative works," Brodie wrote in the August 2020 ruling.

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Person who made the Windows 3.1 port of Wordle is back with a ChatGPT client

Enlarge / WinGPT answering many pressing and cutting-edge questions. (credit: Dialup.net)

Microsoft is working to integrate ChatGPT-based technology into more and more places in Windows 11, but it isn't doing the same for older versions of Windows. Those of you with an old Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 PC can breathe easy, though, because the same developer who created the Windows 3.1 version of Wordle has returned with a Windows 3.1 ChatGPT client called WinGPT.

WinGPT supports any 16- or 32-bit version of Windows 3.1 or newer but won't run natively on 64-bit versions of Windows. You can download it from the bottom of this Dialup.net page, which also doubles as a development blog detailing how it was built and how its icon was designed. You'll need to provide your own OpenAI API key.

Running ChatGPT on ancient systems is possible mostly because most processing happens on OpenAI's servers rather than locally, so you don't need a modern 16-core battle station to make it work. The main limitation on old hardware is memory rather than processing power. Windows 3.1 generally won't boot with more than 256MB, and a period-appropriate 386 or 486 PC would be more likely to use between 4MB and 8MB (for reference, here's a 1992 Compaq Deskpro ad for 386 and 486 PCs). The OS would install and run on systems with as little as 1MB.

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RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days

Enlarge / My dead Pixel Fold display. That huge white gradient should not be there. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

A flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. That was my brief experience with the Pixel Fold, which was a wonderful little device until the display died, along with my hopes and dreams. I barely used it, but it was beautiful.

I didn't do anything to deserve this. The phone sat on my desk while I wrote about it, and I would occasionally stop to poke the screen, take a screenshot, or open and close it. It was never dropped or exposed to a significant amount of grit, nor had it gone through the years of normal wear and tear that phones are expected to survive. This was the lightest possible usage of a phone, and it still broke.

The flexible OLED screen died after four days. The bottom 10 pixels of the Pixel Fold went dead first, forming a white line of 100 percent brightness pixels that blazed across the bottom of the screen. The entire left half of the foldable display stopped responding to touch, too, and an hour later, a white gradient started growing upward across the display.

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Dealmaster: Early Amazon Prime Day 2023 deals and more

Amazon Prime Day 2023 is coming on July 11 and 12, but you don't have to wait for the shopping event to score some of the biggest deals. Amazon is already starting the savings with early deals ranging from Amazon-made devices, like the Kindle and BOGO Echo promotions, to $100 TVs, Apple Watches, and iPads. There are even a few Echo Dot accessories for Star Wars fans. We've rounded up some of the best early Amazon Prime Day deals below, so you can shop early and shop smart. We've even added a few deals from other retailers as well.

Apple deals

(credit: Corey Gaskin)

• Apple Watch Series 8 in 41mm for $329 (was $399) at Amazon
• Apple Watch Series 8 in 45mm for $359 (was $429) at Amazon
• Apple iPad 9th Gen for $270 (was $329) at Amazon
• Apple iPad 10th Gen for $419 (was $449) at Amazon
• Apple iPad Pro (12.9-inch, M2) for $1,049 (was $1,099) at Amazon
• Apple AirPods Pro 2nd Generation for $200 (was $249) at Amazon
• Apple AirPods Max for $480 (was $549) at Amazon
• Apple AirPods 3rd Generation for $159 (was $169) at Amazon
• Apple AirPods 2nd Generation for $99 (was $129) at Amazon
• Apple AirTags (4-pack) for $90 (was $99) at Amazon

Headphone deals

Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. (credit: Samsung)

• Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 starting at $108 (was $150) at Amazon
• Beats Solo 3 for $129 (was $200) at Amazon
• PowerBeats Pro for $190 (was $250) at Amazon
• Beats Studio 3 for $169 (was $350) at Amazon
• Sony WF-1000XM4 for $228 (was $280) at Amazon

Amazon Kindle and Fire tablet deals

Amazon Kids Fire Edition tablet computers in 2015. (credit: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

• Amazon Fire 7 Kids tablet for $55 (was $110) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids tablet for $75 (was $150) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Pro tablet for $75 (was $150) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet for $120 (was $200) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet with productivity bundle for $330 (was $355) at Amazon

Amazon Fire TV deals

Amazon 43-inch Fire TV Omni Series 4K.

• Amazon Fire TV 43-inch Omni 4K UHD TV for $100 with invitation (was $400) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 32-inch 2-Series 720p TV for $130 (was $200) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 55-inch 4-Series 4K UHD TV for $380 (was $520) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 43-inch 4-Series 4K UHD TV for $260 (was $370) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 50-inch Omni 4K UHD TV for $410 (was $480) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 50-inch 4-Series 4K UHD TV for $310 (was $450) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 65-inch Omni 4K UHD TV for $580 (was $760) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 75-inch Omni 4K UHD TV for $720 (was $1,050) at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV 55-inch Omni 4K UHD TV for $430 (was $550) at Amazon

Amazon Echo

Echo Dot 4th-gen is also available in kid-friendly motifs, such as this panda. (credit: Amazon)

• Amazon Echo Dot 5th Gen Kids for $28 (was $60) at Amazon
• Star Wars The Mandalorian Stand for Echo Dot 4th and 5th Generation for $30 with invitation (was $40) at Amazon
• Star Wars Darth Vader Stand for Echo Dot 4th and 5th Generation for $30 with invitation (was $40) at Amazon
• Star Wars Stormtrooper Stand for Echo Dot 4th and 5th Generation for $30 with invitation (was $40) at Amazon
• Echo Show 5 Kids 3rd Generation (2-pack) for $100 with SHOW5KIDS promo (was $200) at Amazon
• Echo Dot 5th Gen Kids Owl with Echo Glow for $58 (was $90) at Amazon
• Echo Dot 5th Gen Kids Dragon with Echo Glow for $58 (was $90) at Amazon
• Echo Dot 5th Gen Kids Owl with Owl Nest Stand for $48 (was $80) at Amazon
• Echo Dot 5th Gen Kids Dragon with Dragon Egg Stand for $48 (was $80) at Amazon

Games and gaming

"Link gets an ancient-tech ATV/combine/dragster" was not in most people's list of likely content in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. (credit: Nintendo)

• Logitech G Cloud handheld console for $300 (was $350) at Amazon
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch for $60 (was $70) at Amazon

Eero mesh router deals

The kit we recommend comes with three of these Eero nodes. Fruit not included. (credit: Eero)

• Amazon Eero 6+ (4-pack) for $285 (was $440) at Amazon
• Amazon Eero Pro 6E (3-pack) with $100 Amazon gift card for $500 (was $650) at Amazon
• Amazon Eero (3-pack) for $127 (was $215) at Amazon
• Amazon Eero Pro (3-pack) for $150 (was $485) at Amazon

Other non-Amazon deals: Laptops and wearables

The 14-inch and 13-inch models will have FHD displays with touch and non-touch options, as well as FreeSync technology. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 (14-inch, Intel Core i7-1365U) for $2,135 with THINKJUNE coupon (was $3,559) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 (14-inch, Intel Core i7-1260P) for $1,650 with THINKPADJUNEDEALS coupon (was $3,439) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 (13-inch, Intel Core i5-1135G7) for $609 with X13G2CLEARANCE coupon (was $2,319) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 AMD (13-inch, AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U) for $1,225 with THINKTECHDEALS2 coupon (was $3,309) at Lenovo
• Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 (16-inch, AMD Ryzen 7 7745HK and RTX 4070) for $1,470 with GAMINGDEALS coupon (was $1,840) at Lenovo
• Lenovo Legion Slim 5i Gen 8 (16-inch, Intel Core i7-13700H and RTX 4060) for $1,300 with GAMINGDEALS coupon (was $1,630) at Lenovo
• Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 (16-inch, AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS and RTX 4060) for $1,280 with GAMINGDEALS coupon (was $1,550) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 4 (14-inch, AMD Ryzen 5825U) for $773 with THINKSPECIALSAVE coupon (was $1,869) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 (14-inch, Intel Core i7-1185G7) for $1,099 with THINKTECHDEALS2 coupon (was $3,869) at Lenovo
• Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 (16-inch, Intel Core i7-13700HX and RTX 4060) for $1,450 with GAMINGDEALS coupon (was $1,700) at Lenovo
• Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 (16-inch, Intel Core i7-13700HX and RTX 4070) for $1,580 with GAMINGDEALS coupon (was $1,880) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 2 (14-inch, Intel Core i7-1185G7 and Nvidia T500) for $800 (was $3,249) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 (16-inch, Intel Core i7-12800H and RTX 3070 Ti) for $2,139 (was $5,339) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 (16-inch, Intel Core i7-12800H and RTX A4500) for $2,439 (was $6,099) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 (16-inch, Intel Core i9-12900H and RTX 3080 Ti) for $2,689 (was $6,729) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad P16 (16-inch, Intel Core i7-12800HX and RTX A1000) for $1,449 (was $3,619) at Lenovo
• Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 (14-inch, Intel Core i5-1335U) for $1,331 with THINKTECHDEALS2 coupon (was $2,219) at Lenovo
• Garmin Instinct Solar 45mm smartwatch for $2500 (was $350) at Best Buy
• Garmin Vivoactive 4 45mm smartwatch for $298 (was $350) at Best Buy
• Garmin Venu 43mm smartwatch for $170 (was $300) at Best Buy
• Garmin Forerunner 745 30mm smartwatch for $453 (was $500) at Best Buy
• Amazfit GTR3 35.3mm smartwatch for $150 (was $180) at Best Buy
• Amazfit T-Rex Pro smartwatch for $140 (was $160) at Best Buy
• Amazfit GTS 3 44.4mm smartwatch for $150 (was $180) at Best Buy

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

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How do you destroy a forever chemical?

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Brookes)

PFAS chemicals seemed like a good idea at first. As Teflon, they made pots easier to clean starting in the 1940s. They made jackets waterproof and carpets stain-resistant. Food wrappers, firefighting foam, even makeup seemed better with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Then tests started detecting PFAS in people’s blood.

Today, PFAS are pervasive in soil, dust and drinking water around the world. Studies suggest they’re in 98% of Americans’ bodies, where they’ve been associated with health problems including thyroid disease, liver damage and kidney and testicular cancer. There are now over 9,000 types of PFAS. They’re often referred to as “forever chemicals” because the same properties that make them so useful also ensure they don’t break down in nature.

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Worries over Starfield skipping Xbox helped push Microsoft to buy Bethesda

Enlarge / The only way we can ensure Sony doesn't capture that planet is if we buy it ourselves! (credit: Bethesda)

Thus far, much of the legal and regulatory drama surrounding Microsoft's proposed purchase of Activision has centered on concerns about the potential for Microsoft to make major cross-platform franchise Call of Duty into an Xbox console exclusive. But Microsoft Xbox Chief Phil Spencer now says separate concerns surrounding Starfield's potential PlayStation exclusivity helped drive Microsoft's 2020 purchase of Bethesda Softworks parent ZeniMax.

In Friday testimony concerning the FTC's attempt to block the Activision purchase, Spencer noted how, in 2020, Sony made paid deals ensuring Bethesda titles Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo would ship on PlayStation months before an Xbox version was available. “So the discussion about Starfield—when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership, so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business," Spencer said on the stand.

Those concerns weren't entirely based on Sony's previous practice, either. Just after the Bethesda purchase was announced, former Kinda Funny Host Imran Khan reported that "Sony had been negotiating timed exclusivity on Starfield as recently as a few months ago."

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Lucid will supply Aston Martin with leading-edge electric powertrains

Enlarge (credit: Aston Martin)

On Monday morning, Aston Martin announced that it has a new technology partner. The low-volume British sports car maker has just signed a deal with Lucid, the US-based electric vehicle startup, that will see future Aston Martin EVs use Lucid's efficient and powerful powertrains.

"The proposed agreement with Lucid forms a significant pillar of our electrification strategy, providing Aston Martin with access to the industry's leading powertrain and battery systems technology. Combined with our internal development, this will allow us to create a single bespoke BEV platform suitable for all future Aston Martin products, all the way from hypercars to sports cars and SUVs," said Roberto Fedeli, Aston Martin's chief technology officer.

Aston Martin is paying Lucid $232 million in a combination of cash and shares to gain access to its technology. Additionally, it will spend at least $225 million on powertrain components.

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Context is everything: Why key developments often sit unused

Enlarge / Mock-up of Sleeping Beauties book cover. (credit: Simon & Schuster)

Andreas Wagner is interested in evolution, that of molecules, species, and ideas. He’s a biochemist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zürich, so he knows that the engine of evolution is random mutations in DNA. But he also knows that these occur all the time. He is interested in deeper questions: Which mutations succeed, and why? In his newest book, Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture, he argues that “where” and “when” might be more salient questions than “why.”

Innovation comes easily

Genetic mutations constantly churn out molecular changes. “Innovation is not precious and rare, but frequent and cheap,” is how he puts it. Wagner says that most of these mutations are ultimately detrimental to the organism that harbors them; a few are beneficial, and many are neutral. But some of these neutral ones may become beneficial millions of years hence, when conditions change. These are the sleeping beauties of the title, just lying there, unknowingly waiting to be awoken by a kiss from Prince Charming.

Mammals had all of the genetic requisites to thrive in place for a hundred million years before we did so; we just didn’t get the opportunity to take over the planet until the dinosaurs were wiped out, the Earth warmed up, and flowering plants diversified. Grasses didn’t immediately become the dominant species blanketing the Earth, and ants didn’t instantly radiate into 11,000 different species; it took 40 million years after each burst onto the scene for them to flourish, although each had the biochemical tools to do so for all that time. And bacteria resistant to synthetic antibiotics existed millions of years ago—possibly even before humans did—but this trait didn’t benefit them (and threaten us) until we started throwing those antibiotics at them last century.

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Behold the likely face of a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon teenage girl

Enlarge / (left) Skull of teenage girl from 7th century CE. (right) Facial reconstruction as she might have looked in life. (credit: University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit/Hew Morrison ©2023)

Earlier this week, archaeologists unveiled the facial reconstruction of the remains of a 7th-century CE Anglo-Saxon teenage girl found in a rare "bed burial" back in 2012. It's part of a new exhibit at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology called "Beneath Our Feet: Archaeology of the Cambridge Region." In addition to the reconstruction, scientists also analyzed the young woman's bones and teeth to learn more about her diet and geographical region of origin.

The girl is believed to have been about 16 years old when she died. The grave was discovered at a site near a village called Trumpington just outside Cambridge. It is one of only 18 so-called "bed burials"—a rare Anglo-Saxon practice, usually reserved for high-status women, in which the deceased was buried on an ornamental bed—discovered thus far in the United Kingdom. Nearby were three other graves holding two younger women and an older person. This particular bed had a wooden frame held together by metal brackets and looped metal to fix the cross-slats, most likely topped with a straw mattress.

Among the grave goods buried with the girl were an iron knife, a chatelaine (decorative belt), glass beads, gold and garnet pins, and most significantly, an ornate gold pectoral cross inlaid with garnets, now known as the Trumpington Cross. Archaeologists believe it may have been sewn onto the robe she was wearing when she died. Such crosses are very rare, and its presence indicated the young woman was likely a member of Anglo-Saxon nobility, particularly when combined with the evidence of the bed burial. The cross indicates she was a Christian, but the grave goods are a pagan practice, so archaeologists view the find as representative of a pivotal period in British history when Christianity had just begun to spread through the land.

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NASAs Mars Sample Return has a new price tagand its colossal

Enlarge / This illustration shows a concept for a proposed NASA Sample Retrieval Lander, about the size of an average two-car garage, that would carry a small rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle to the Martian surface. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

During his final months as the chief of NASA's science programs last year, there was one mission Thomas Zurbuchen fretted about more than any other—the agency's ambitious plan to return rocks from Mars to Earth. He supported the Mars Sample Return mission and helped get it moving through the agency's approval process. But the project threatened to devour the agency's science budget.

"This was the thing that gave me sleepless nights toward the end of my tenure at NASA and even after I left," said Zurbuchen, who left NASA after seven years leading its Science Mission Directorate at the end of 2022. "I think there's a crisis going on."

Now, Ars has learned, the problem may be even worse that Zurbuchen imagined.

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A threat to portable monitors everywhere: Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review

Enlarge / The hinge awkwardly breaking up content on Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i. (credit: Scharon Harding)

Specs at a glance: Lenovo Yoga Book 9i
	Worst	Best	As reviewed
Screen	2x 13.3-inch 2880×1800 OLED touchscreen
OS	Windows 11 Home
CPU	Intel Core i7-1355U
RAM	16GB LPDDR5x-6400
Storage	512GB M.2 NVMe 2242 PCIe 4.0 SSD	1TB M.2 NVMe 2242 PCIe 4.0 SSD	512GB M.2 NVMe 2242 PCIe 4.0 SSD
Networking	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1
Ports	3x Thunderbolt 4
Size	11.78×8.03×0.63 inches (299.1×203.9×15.95 mm)
Weight	Starts at 2.95 lbs (1.34 kg)
Battery	80 Wh
Warranty	1 year
Price (MSRP)	$2,000	$2,100	$2,000
Other	Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth mouse, stylus, and laptop stand/keyboard cover included

Dual-screen laptops have been around for enough years that Asus now has a lineup of them. But Lenovo's Yoga Book 9 is the dual-screen option for maximum screen space. Open the 2-in-1 laptop, and you'll find two 13.3-inch, 16:10 OLED touchscreens in lieu of any integrated keyboard, touchpad, or traditional deck.

The machine looks striking. But once you're past the initial intrigue, you might ask yourself: Why would I want this? Well—you might not. This is an unusual laptop built for unique needs. While our review will explain how it works—and its undesirable quirks—many might find its design inconvenient.

But for some, the laptop opens possibilities in ways new laptops rarely do. It can make your portable monitor redundant, and it sports a crease-free look that foldables can only dream of at this point. Lenovo's dual-screen laptop could influence future products for the better. For now, the laptop's a refreshingly realistic option for people who want more screen real estate without giving up more space.

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Meta wont negotiate with publishers will end Facebook news in Canada

Enlarge (credit: Emmeci74 | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Yesterday, Canada passed its Online News Act, which requires tech companies to negotiate content deals with news publishers and pay news outlets for links shared on their platforms. As Meta threatened back in March, it promptly announced yesterday that it will be quickly ending news access on Facebook and Instagram in response to the law, Reuters reported.

"Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act taking effect," Meta's statement said.

According to The New York Times, it's still unclear when Canada's law will take effect, but Meta's statement makes it sound like Meta plans to cut off news as quickly as it can. Meta claims that news has no value to either the tech giant or to users who do not go to Facebook and Instagram to consume news.

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Private email shows PlayStation chief unworried about Xbox-exclusive Call of Duty

Artist's conception of Playstation chief Jim Ryan as he sent an email about the proposed Microsoft/Activision deal. (credit: Blogspot / Morning Companion)

Publicly, Sony has been adamant that Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision would give Microsoft too much power over PlayStation's access to key multi-console franchises like Call of Duty. Privately, though, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan seemed less concerned, according to a blockbuster email Microsoft presented Thursday during opening statements in a court hearing on the FTC's attempts to block the Activision purchase.

“It’s not an exclusive play at all,” Ryan said in the January 2022 email, as read by Microsoft lawyer Beth Wilkinson. "They are thinking bigger than that and they have the cash to make moves like this."

"I’ve spent a fair amount of time with both [Microsoft gaming head Phil Spencer] and Bobby [Kotick] over the past day," Ryan continued in the email. "I’m pretty sure we will continue to see CoD on PlayStation for many years to come. I’m not complacent and I’d rather this hasn’t happened but we’ll be OK, more than OK.”

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Fords bonkers new electric Supervan 4 is racing Pikes Peak this Sunday

Enlarge / This bewinged creation is the Ford Supervan 4.2. It looks (a bit) like the Ford E-Transit but goes much, much faster. (credit: Ford)

When Ford let Ars drive its new electric E-Transit van in early 2022, I probably annoyed the heck out of the engineers and executives by repeatedly suggesting they make a Supervan version. While I don't think for a minute that my bugging them had any effect, the company did just that, building a souped-up version of its electric commercial vehicle with almost 2,000 hp (1,400 kW) and aerodynamic appendages that would not look out of place on a Fokker Triplane. And this weekend, it's sending Supervan 4 to one of the hardest races in the world—the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Supervan?

Ford's Transit van occupies roughly the same place in the European and British psyche as the pickup truck in the US. It's the default tradesperson's vehicle, available in various configurations and beloved by everyone from plumbers and builders to tour bands.

Supervan 4.2's interior is quite unlike the production E-Transit. I don't think this one has a driver monitoring program that beeps at you if you accelerate too quickly, for one thing. (credit: Ford)

In 1970 or 1971, some bright spark at Ford UK had an idea to promote the Transit's image. A Transit body shell was mated to the chassis of a GT40 race car, complete with 400 hp (298 kW) V8 engine. The Supervan was born, and it made its debut at a 1971 race meeting at Brands Hatch, just outside of London. Its performance was unlike any Transit van at the time, if a little pedestrian 52 years later—a zero to 60 mph time of seven seconds. For comparison, the current electric E-Transit is 0.6 seconds quicker off the line.

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Apple fixes 0-day kernel and WebKit security flaws in iOS macOS watchOS and more

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple has released new minor updates for iOS 16, macOS 13 Ventura, and most of its other actively supported operating systems that fix a pair of serious security bugs that the company says "may have been actively exploited." You should install the iOS and iPadOS 16.5.1, macOS 13.4.1, and watchOS 9.5.2 updates at your earliest convenience, if you haven't already.

One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-32434, is a kernel-level flaw that can allow apps to "execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges." The other, a WebKit bug labeled CVE-2023-32439, can allow the execution of arbitrary code after processing "maliciously crafted web content."

The iOS and iPadOS 16.5.1 updates also fix a non-security bug "that prevents charging with the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter."

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The bad blood between Musk and Zuckerberg began with a bang

Enlarge / Musk versus Zuckerberg in a cage match? Probably not. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images ( David Paul Morris | Nathan Laine))

The Internet is aflame this morning with the prospect of a cage match between two of the tech industry's most prominent and controversial leaders. Ready to rumble in the red corner is Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. And in the blue corner, we have the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

As the BBC and multiple other outlets have confirmed, Zuckerberg was entirely serious when he accepted Musk's offer of a cage match by saying "send me location." On Wednesday evening, Musk then replied with "Vegas Octagon." This was a reference to the fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts in Las Vegas.

Given the humorous nature of Musk's other responses to the proposed fight, such as "I have this great move that I call 'The Walrus', where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing," it seems probable that he is not overly serious. While Musk has the definite advantage in size, he is 12 years older than Zuckerberg, and the Facebook founder frequently trains in mixed-martial arts.

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FTC: Xbox-exclusive Starfield is powerful evidence against Activision deal

Enlarge / The fact that Starfield won't be on PlayStation means Microsoft could conceivably make the same decision for Call of Duty, the FTC argues.

For months now, Microsoft has sworn up and down that it has no interest in making Call of Duty exclusive to the Xbox if and when its proposed $69 billion Activision acquisition is approved. But as the FTC's request for an injunction stopping that acquisition heads toward opening arguments this week, the federal regulator cites one piece of what it calls "powerful evidence" that it can't trust Microsoft's assurances. In short, as the FTC puts it, "Microsoft's actions following its 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax speak louder than Defendants' words."

Longtime readers and game industry watchers may remember that, before Microsoft's ZeniMax purchase was complete, executives from both companies made vague noises suggesting future Bethesda games might not become Xbox exclusives. Once the ink was dry on the final deal, though, Microsoft quickly announced console exclusivity for some future Bethesda titles, including Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI.

Ahead of the Activision deal closing, Microsoft has made much stronger commitments as far as keeping Call of Duty a multi-platform franchise. Taking Call of Duty off of PlayStation would be nonsensical, Microsoft says in a recent legal filing. The franchise is "profitable precisely because [it] generate[s] sales on many different platforms," and the deal as structured can't be profitable for Microsoft without those PlayStation Call of Duty revenues, the company writes. Making Call of Duty exclusive would make for "a worse game and enrage the gaming community, because much of the game's popularity stems from the way it brings together players who use competing consoles," Microsoft writes.

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DuckDuckGo browser beta for Windows bakes in a lot of privacy tools

Enlarge / By using DuckDuckGo's built-in Duck Player, you should be able to avoid both advertisements and having your YouTube recommendations be affected by memes and movie clips for when you forget to open a private window. (credit: DuckDuckGo)

Privacy-focused firm DuckDuckGo has released a public beta of its browser for Windows, offering more default privacy protections and an assortment of Duck-made browsing tools.

More than a year after debuting its browser for Mac in private beta, the search engine and tracking antagonist offers many of those same features to a much wider audience. Like its Mac browser, DuckDuckGo (DDG) uses "the underlying operating system rendering API" rather than its own forked browser code. That's "a Windows WebView2 call that utilizes the Blink rendering engine underneath," according to DuckDuckGo's blog post. Fittingly, the browser reports itself as Microsoft Edge at most header-scanning sites.

Inside the DuckDuckGo browser, you'll find:

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New 2D Super Mario Bros. Wonder RPG remake lead Nintendo Direct reveals

Enlarge / Are you going to enjoy playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder? It might help if you gauge your reaction to shiny, moustache-under-the-trunk Elephant Mario. (credit: Nintendo)

The stinger, the bit Nintendo knew everybody was going to remember, was Mario as an elephant. It could almost make you forget the surreal revisit to a traditional 2D Mario game the company had just finished showing you.

My favorite video.

The trailer for Super Mario Bros. Wonder starts off in familiar territory, minus the talking flower that urges Mario "onward and upward!" Mario hops over a pipe, onto some Goombas, and dodges a Piranha Plant. Then he's bouncing off some spherical hippos, past some Goombas that are...  wearing toupees? He does some rail grinding, jumps through some waterfalls—typical Mario things.

But then he touches a blue "Wonder Flower," reflective goo starts pulsing around the corners of the screen, and a typical pipes-and-baddies level goes bizarre. Pipes rise, spout water, and worm-wiggle around. Another level is all silhouettes against an ethereally purple background, but Mario can stretch himself five times as tall. Mario becomes a spiked ball. Mario rides a sheep stampede. It ends when Mario finds a Wonder Seed, and the Mushroom Kingdom looks relatively recognizable.

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Heres how Ferrari designed a car that won Le Mans on its first attempt

Enlarge / Ferrari last won Le Mans overall in 1965 and hasn't competed at the top level since 1973. This year it returned and won with the hybrid 499P hypercar. (credit: Ferrari)

On Tuesday morning, a triumphant Ferrari celebrated its latest race win. Not this past weekend's F1 race in Montreal, though; 2023 is still looking rough for Scuderia Ferrari's open-wheel racing program. Instead, the glory was brought back to Maranello by its new endurance racing effort, which just won the 24 Hours of Le Mans after an absence of 50 years. It did it with an all-new car, against tough opposition, and the enormity of that result has taken a little time to sink in, according to Ferdinando Cannizzo, technical director of Ferrari Competitzione GT and technical director for the Ferrari 499P program.

"What I can tell you is that it is clear for us that the challenge that we accepted was very ambitious, that we finally achieved a very historical result," Cannizzo told Ars. "We are aware that the company achieved an historic results, and I think everything will mature in the days that will come; we can probably realize the value of what we have done all together."

Endurance racing is flat-out now

The nature of the Le Mans race has changed a lot since Ferrari last won overall in 1965. Then, as now, overall victory was usually up for grabs for one of the cars in the prototype class—cars designed just to go racing rather than the converted road cars that contest the GT class. And the race still takes place for 24 hours on a circuit that still includes some public roads. But in the 1960s, endurance racing was not a flat-out sport; cars were fragile, and making it to the end meant leaving plenty in reserve and being kind to the machinery.

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Beyond missing Titanic sub handheld gamepads are a common military interface

Enlarge / Senior Airman Ryan Hoagland operates an explosive ordnance disposal robot using an Xbox 360 controller. (credit: US Air Force / Flickr)

This weekend's tragic disappearance of an OceanGate Expeditions tourist submersible has led to a fair share of bemused coverage focused on the company's apparent use of a $30 Logitech F710 wireless PC game controller for its interface. But OceanGate is far from the first outfit to use off-the-shelf or slightly modified gaming control hardware to power expensive heavy machinery well outside of the gaming realm.

MRI analysis firm BodyViz, for instance, told the BBC that an Xbox controller provided a much more intuitive way to “rotate, pan, zoom or fly-through a patient's virtual anatomy” than the previously standard mouse-and-keyboard interface. And NASA has used an Xbox Kinect as an interface to control complex rovers like the six-limbed ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer).

But international militaries have shown some of the most avid and continued interest in adapting game-control interfaces for decidedly non-entertainment uses. In 2014, the US Navy was promoting its use of "a video game-like controller" in a laser weapon prototype, for example. And in 2018, the USS Colorado attack submarine was handing Navy sailors an Xbox controller to operate its periscope-like photonic masts.

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Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

Enlarge / OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush shows David Pogue the 2010-era game controller that pilots the Titan sub during a CBS Sunday Morning segment broadcast in November 2022. (credit: CBS Sunday Morning)

On Sunday, news broke about an OceanGate Expeditions tourist submarine headed for the wreck of the Titanic that went missing with five people aboard. Soon after, details emerged about the sub's non-standard design that did not meet regulations, including steering apparently handled by a $30 Logitech F710 wireless PC game controller from 2010.

Reuters reports that the five-person crew of the missing vessel, known as Titan, includes Hamish Harding, a British billionaire and adventure enthusiast, and OceanGate's founder and CEO, Stockton Rush. It disappeared on Sunday while on an expedition to explore the Titanic shipwreck site after losing contact with the Polar Prince research ship, roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes after their dive began.

The submarine was last reported in the North Atlantic, approximately 900 miles east of Cape Cod, in a water body known to have a depth of about 13,000 feet. Search and rescue operations began shortly thereafter and are still underway. According to the BBC, the entire sub is bolted shut from the outside, so even if the vessel surfaces, the occupants cannot escape without outside assistance and could suffocate within the capsule.

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