A jargon-free explanation of how AI large language models work

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica.)

When ChatGPT was introduced last fall, it sent shockwaves through the technology industry and the larger world. Machine learning researchers had been experimenting with large language models (LLMs) for a few years by that point, but the general public had not been paying close attention and didn’t realize how powerful they had become.

Today, almost everyone has heard about LLMs, and tens of millions of people have tried them out. But not very many people understand how they work.

If you know anything about this subject, you’ve probably heard that LLMs are trained to “predict the next word” and that they require huge amounts of text to do this. But that tends to be where the explanation stops. The details of how they predict the next word is often treated as a deep mystery.

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Instead of obtaining a warrant, the NSA would like to keep buying your data

National Security Agency headquarters. (credit: Trevor Paglen, Wikimedia Commons)

An effort by United States lawmakers to prevent government agencies from domestically tracking citizens without a search warrant is facing opposition internally from one of its largest intelligence services.

Republican and Democratic aides familiar with ongoing defense-spending negotiations in Congress say officials at the National Security Agency (NSA) have approached lawmakers charged with its oversight about opposing an amendment that would prevent it from paying companies for location data instead of obtaining a warrant in court.

Introduced by US representatives Warren Davidson and Sara Jacobs, the amendment, first reported by WIRED, would prohibit US military agencies from “purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant, court order, or subpoena” to obtain. The ban would cover more than half of the US intelligence community, including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the newly formed National Space Intelligence Center, among others.

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The 2023 Porsche Cayman GT4 RS is the best sports car on sale today

Enlarge / Everyone always said Porsche would never put its best flat-six engine in the Cayman or it would overshadow the 911. Maybe that's exactly what's happened. (credit: Bradley Iger)

Judging by recent projects like the Mission R and 718 Cayman GT4 ePerformance, Porsche looks poised to introduce an electrified version of the Cayman in the not-too-distant future. While it's likely that such a sports car will raise the bar for certain measures of performance, it's also safe to assume that the driving experience will be altered significantly. Thus far, high-performance EVs have struggled to deliver the kind of emotional connection that enthusiasts have grown accustomed to from their ICE-motivated counterparts—a factor that's undoubtedly top of mind for the designers who are working on the next generation of the automaker's lineup. In the meantime, though, the folks in Porsche's GT division have ensured that the current era of the Cayman will not go gentle into that good night.

A vocal contingent of the Weissach faithful long insisted that a model like the GT4 RS would never be produced. Since its introduction in 2005, the Cayman has been positioned as Porsche's entry-level sports coupe relative to the 911, and many posited that this mid-engine platform would never realize its full potential due to concerns that it might upstage its iconic older brother. Although the debut of the 981-generation Cayman GT4 back in 2016 was arguably the first piece of evidence that effectively refuted this theory, the 718 GT4 RS puts the notion to bed. Not only is this the most visceral and capable Cayman ever produced, it also makes a strong case for itself as the most compelling sports car on sale today, full stop.

The GT4 RS benefits from a wide variety of upgrades, but the engine is undoubtedly the star of the show. While it shares the same displacement as the naturally aspirated 4.0 L flat-six in the standard 718 GT4, it's actually an entirely different engine that's borrowed from the latest 911 GT3. Output is down slightly from that rear-engine application due to the backpressure created by the Cayman's longer exhaust system, but peak figures of 493 hp (368 kW) and 331 lb-ft (449 Nm) of torque still make this the most powerful factory-produced Cayman ever offered by a wide margin and bestow it with a searing 9,000 rpm redline.

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Apple Pencils can’t draw straight on third-party replacement iPad screens

Enlarge / iCorrect's attempts to draw a straight line on an iPad Pro with a third-party replacement screen led them to look at the screen's embedded chips for parts-pairing problems. (credit: iCorrect UK)

The latest part of an Apple device to demand a repair by its maker appears to be the screens on newer iPads. Reports from repair shops and customers suggest that Apple Pencils no longer work properly on non-genuine Apple screens, as they draw squiggly lines on a diagonal instead of straight.

Ricky Panesar, CEO of UK repair firm iCorrect, told Forbes that screens replaced on newer iPad Pros (fifth and sixth-generation 12.9-inch and third and fourth-generation 11-inch models) do not deliver straight lines when an Apple Pencil is used to draw at an angle. "They have a memory chip that sits on the screen that's programmed to only allow the Pencil functionality to work if the screen is connected to the original logic board," Panesar told Forbes.

A Reddit post from May 23 from a user reporting "jittery" diagonal lines from an Apple Pencil on a newly replaced iPad mini screen suggests the issue may affect more than just the Pro line of iPads.

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Did Facebook fuel political polarization during the 2020 election? It’s complicated.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

Over the last several years, there have been growing concerns about the influence of social media on fostering political polarization in the US, with critical implications for democracy. But it's unclear whether our online "echo chambers" are the driving factor behind that polarization or whether social media merely reflects (and arguably amplifies) divisions that already exist. Several intervention strategies have been proposed to reduce polarization and the spread of misinformation on social media, but it's equally unclear how effective they would be at addressing the problem.

The US 2020 Facebook and Instagram Election Study is a joint collaboration between a group of independent external academics from several institutions and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The project is designed to explore these and other relevant questions about the role of social media in democracy within the context of the 2020 US election. It's also a first in terms of the degree of transparency and independence that Meta has granted to academic researchers. Now we have the first results from this unusual collaboration, detailed in four separate papers—the first round of over a dozen studies stemming from the project.

Three of the papers were published in a special issue of the journal Science. The first paper investigated how exposure to political news content on Facebook was segregated ideologically. The second paper delved into the effects of a reverse chronological feed as opposed to an algorithmic one. The third paper examined the effects of exposure to reshared content on Facebook. And the fourth paper, published in Nature, explored the extent to which social media "echo chambers" contribute to increased polarization and hostility.

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Formula E’s first visit to a proper American racetrack saw packed stands

Enlarge / I can think of maybe one other race track that has a volcano for a backdrop. (credit: Sam Bloxham/Formula E)

Jaguar Land Rover provided a flight from Washington, DC, to Portland and two nights in a hotel so we could attend the Formula E race. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

PORTLAND, Ore.—This year's Formula E season draws to a close this weekend, with the final two rounds taking place in London. The title fight is a three-way contest, with Avalanche Andretti's Jake Dennis leading Envision Racing's Nick Cassidy and Jaguar TCS Racing's Mitch Evans. Last month, the series held a race here in the US on the opposite coast of its traditional home in Brooklyn. Formula E did something outside its comfort zone, holding a race at permanent road course—Portland International Speedway. And as Ars found out, it was a good decision; this leafy race track with its volcano backdrop felt like a much better venue for Formula E than a humid parking lot next to the Hudson River.

It was also our first opportunity to see the series' new cars in action, and they're significantly lighter and more powerful than the Gen2 machines. As ever, the drivers have a lot of work to do to manage energy in the cars, thanks to restricted telemetry to their engineers in the pit lane and new tires that prioritize sustainability over outright grip.

Portland saw the Gen3 cars reach their highest ever top speeds. (credit: Simon Galloway/Formula E)

This isn’t a city center street circuit

Portland was not the first Formula E race we've attended; we were on hand to see the series' rather chaotic Miami ePrix in 2015, and Ars logos even ran on a pair of cars at that year's London ePrix. Miami was not a repeat event for the sport, and the Long Beach ePrix in California was held only twice, in 2015 and 2016.

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Rocket Report: Starbase comes alive again; China launches four times

Enlarge / The Super Heavy booster for SpaceX's next Starship test flight is raised onto its launch mount at the Starbase facility in South Texas. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 6.04 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX has a Super Heavy booster on the launch pad in Texas a lot sooner than many thought. There was some pretty extensive damage at the launch site in the aftermath of the Starship test launch in April, SpaceX made quick work with repairs and upgrades to beef up the pad. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Falcon 9 launcher, Rocket Lab's Electron, and China's rocket fleet show no signs of slowing down.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

China's Galactic Energy launches sixth successful mission. Galactic Energy, one of several new Chinese startup launch companies, launched its sixth consecutive successful satellite delivery mission on July 22, Space News reports. The company's solid-fueled Ceres 1 rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan launch base in the Gobi Desert with two small satellites on board. Galactic Energy is also developing a medium-lift rocket named Pallas 1 that is designed to eventually be recoverable and reusable.

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Ultra-fast niobium batteries boast 6-min charge for Lotus Elise-based EV

Enlarge / The Lotus Elise is an archetypal lightweight sports car. Now, it has inspired a showcase for new battery technology, courtesy of Nyobolt. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Polestar provided a flight from Washington, DC, to London and back and two nights in a hotel so we could visit its UK R&D center and attend the Goodwood Festival Of Speed. While we were there, we also spoke to Nyobolt about its battery technology. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

GOODWOOD, England—When is a Lotus Elise not a Lotus Elise? When it's the Nyobolt EV—which, to be accurate, is actually a stretched Lotus Exige chassis with new bodywork designed by Julian Thompson, who styled the original Elise in 1996. Delightful though the little sports car is, what's under the skin is even more intriguing. The concept showcases a new battery technology that promises more rapid DC charging than any electric vehicle currently on sale.

As just about everyone who has driven one knows, EVs really are better at almost everything. They're three to four times more efficient than vehicles that burn gasoline, there are fewer moving parts to break, they're quieter and smoother, and they offer near-instant torque.

But it still takes longer to recharge a battery than refill a gas tank, and EV charging locations don't shout their presence with 50-foot ad displays along highways. That's engendered a general sense of range anxiety among many car buyers, leading car makers to pack their EVs with bigger batteries in an effort to beef up their range numbers. And that, in turn, makes those EVs heavy and expensive.

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A nearly 20-year ban on human spaceflight regulations is set to expire

Enlarge / A crew of six passengers, including former professional football player and television anchor Michael Strahan, stroll past the Blue Origin New Shepard booster they rode into space in December 2021. (credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In 2004, Congress passed a law that established a moratorium on federal safety regulations for commercial astronauts and space tourists riding to space on new privately owned rockets and spacecraft. The idea was to allow time for new space companies to establish themselves before falling under the burden of regulations, an eventuality that spaceflight startups argued could impede the industry's development.

The moratorium is also known as a "learning period," a term that describes the purpose of the provision. It's supposed to give companies and the Federal Aviation Administration—the agency tasked with overseeing commercial human spaceflight, launch, and re-entry operations—time to learn how to safely fly in space and develop smart regulations, those that make spaceflight safer but don't restrict innovation.

Without action from Congress, by the end of September, the moratorium on human spaceflight regulations will expire. That has many in the commercial space industry concerned.

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Samsung makes the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 official

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  Samsung's new foldables, the Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5. [credit: Samsung ]

Samsung's newest foldable phones are the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5. The two devices were made official at a South Korean show early this morning.

First is the Z Fold 5, which is phone-sized when closed and opens up to be a bigger device. The changes here are mostly just a spec bump and a new "double rail Flex Hinge" system. The new hinge design brings the phone more in line with most other foldables. When closed, the support plates under the display crease swing out of the way, allowing the bent-over display to sit more loosely in a teardrop shape rather than crushing it into a hard crease. This means the phone can fold flat instead of having a gap when closed. Most executions of this style of hinge still have a divot or trench in the middle of the screen, but it's easier on the display.

The Fold was a pioneer as the first foldable phone, but it now seems to be spending this release catching up to the competition. Besides adopting the competition's hinge design, Samsung still has some work to do on the thinness front. Foldables are giant devices in your pocket, and thinness really matters when you're potentially talking about double the weight and thickness of a normal phone. The fold-flat hinge and some work slimming down the phone puts the Z Fold 5 at 13.4 mm thick when folded up. With a 4400 mAh battery, that's just not very impressive. In the US, the Pixel Fold manages to be 12.1 mm thick with a 5000 mAh battery. In China, the Honor Magic V2 is somehow 9.9 mm thick when folded, with a 5000 mAh battery.

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Major AI companies form group to research, keep control of AI

Enlarge / The four companies say they launched the Frontier Model Forum to ensure "the safe and responsible development of frontier AI models." (credit: Financial Times)

Four of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence companies have formed a group to research increasingly powerful AI and establish best practices for controlling it, as public anxiety and regulatory scrutiny over the impact of the technology increases.

On Wednesday, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI launched the Frontier Model Forum, with the aim of “ensuring the safe and responsible development of frontier AI models.”

In recent months, the US companies have rolled out increasingly powerful AI tools that produce original content in image, text or video form by drawing on a bank of existing material. The developments have raised concerns about copyright infringement, privacy breaches and that AI could ultimately replace humans in a range of jobs.

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How we host Ars Technica in the cloud, part two: The software

Enlarge / Welcome aboard the orbital HQ, readers! (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Welcome back to our series on how Ars Technica is hosted and run! Last week, in part one, we cracked open the (virtual) doors to peek inside the Ars (virtual) data center. We talked about our Amazon Web Services setup, which is primarily built around ECS containers being spun up as needed to handle web traffic, and we walked through the ways that all of our hosting services hook together and function as a whole.

This week, we shift our focus to a different layer in the stack—the applications we run on those services and how they work in the cloud. Those applications, after all, are what you come to the site for; you’re not here to marvel at a smoothly functioning infrastructure but rather to actually read the site. (I mean, I’m guessing that’s why you come here. It’s either that or everyone is showing up hoping I’m going to pour ketchup on myself and launch myself down a Slip-'N-Slide, but that was a one-time thing I did a long time ago when I was young and needed the money.)

How traditional WordPress hosting works

Although I am, at best, a casual sysadmin, having hung up my pro spurs a decade and change ago, I do have some relevant practical experience hosting WordPress. I’m currently the volunteer admin for a half-dozen WordPress sites, including Houston-area weather forecast destination Space City Weather (along with its Spanish-language counterpart Tiempo Ciudad Espacial), the Atlantic hurricane-focused blog The Eyewall, my personal blog, and a few other odds and ends.

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Dinosaurs and the evolution of breathing through bones

Enlarge / It takes careful study and the right kind of bones to determine how something like this breathed. (credit: Tito Aureliano et. al.)

Somewhere in Earth’s past, some branches on the tree of life adopted a body plan that made breathing and cooling down considerably more efficient than how mammalian bodies like ours do it. This development might not seem like much on the surface, until you consider that it may have ultimately enabled some of the largest dinosaurs this planet has ever known. It was so successful that it was maintained by three different groups of extinct species and continues to exist today in the living descendants of dinosaurs.

Because lungs don’t usually survive fossilization, one might wonder how scientists are able to ascertain anything about the breathing capabilities of extinct species. The answer lies within their bones.

In a suite of papers published in late 2022 and early 2023, paleontologists examined fossil microstructure within some of the earliest known dinosaurs to determine just how early parts of this system evolved.

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Researchers find deliberate backdoor in police radio encryption algorithm

Enlarge (credit: Evgen_Prozhyrko via Getty)

For more than 25 years, a technology used for critical data and voice radio communications around the world has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent anyone from closely scrutinizing its security properties for vulnerabilities. But now it’s finally getting a public airing thanks to a small group of researchers in the Netherlands who got their hands on its viscera and found serious flaws, including a deliberate backdoor.

The backdoor, known for years by vendors that sold the technology but not necessarily by customers, exists in an encryption algorithm baked into radios sold for commercial use in critical infrastructure. It’s used to transmit encrypted data and commands in pipelines, railways, the electric grid, mass transit, and freight trains. It would allow someone to snoop on communications to learn how a system works, then potentially send commands to the radios that could trigger blackouts, halt gas pipeline flows, or reroute trains.

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Catching up with Foundation S2 as the Second Crisis unfolds

Enlarge / Lee Pace as the latest incarnation of Brother Day, one of a trio of ruling Cleons in Apple TV's Foundation. (credit: Apple TV+)

We're now two episodes into the second season of Foundation, Apple TV's epic sci-fi series adapted—or remixed, per showrunner David Goyer—from the seminal series of stories by Isaac Asimov, and it's shaping up to be even better than its first. Goyer took great pains in S1 to carefully set up his expansive fictional world, and the scope has only broadened in the second season.

Goyer describes the new season as more emotional and romantic, with a bit more humor—or at least moments of levity—and faster paced now that the main characters and their key relationships have been well established. "Now it's a bit like jazz," he said. "We can riff on our creation and start to move the chess pieces around and create alliances or unusual pairings that didn't exist last season. Audiences have a certain expectation of how things are going to unfold, and part of the fun is subverting those expectations." The narrative is also more linear, with fewer time jumps forward and back—just the occasional traditional flashback.

(Major spoilers for S1 below. Some minor spoilers for S2 but no major reveals.)

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Tesla misses deadline to inform NHTSA about Autopilot problems

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Tesla | Airplane!)

On July 3, 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made public a letter it sent Tesla in August 2022, demanding that the company provide updated responses to some questions. NHTSA is investigating the performance of Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance system after identifying more than a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles struck stopped emergency vehicles. The agency is also investigating whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure drivers are paying attention when using the Autopilot system.

Following a string of notable crashes, NHTSA officially initiated an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system. And on July 3, NHTSA wrote to Tesla again, asking the automaker for updated information by July 19. As far as anyone can tell, that didn't happen.

Recalls galore

If NHTSA decides to issue a recall, it wouldn’t be the first time. Tesla has faced a significant number of recalls over the past decade, covering various issues ranging from seatbelts to battery-related concerns.

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Watch out Porsche, Polestar is working on a proper Taycan rival

Enlarge / Polestar is developing a four-door electric GT called the Polestar 5, which goes on sale in 2024. (credit: Polestar)

Polestar provided a flight from Washington, DC, to London and back and two nights in a hotel so we could visit its UK R&D center. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

NUNEATON, ENGLAND—Any day is a good day that involves a visit to a proving ground, even if that includes a two-hour drive fresh from a transatlantic flight. And this was a good day: a visit to Polestar's UK research and development center, based at the Motor Industry Research Association's proving grounds outside Coventry, England, to find out how it's getting on with one of its next electric vehicles, a purposeful-looking performance sedan called the Polestar 5.

Until now, the Polestar EVs we've seen have used platforms shared across other brands within the Geely group. The Polestar 2 fastback sedan uses the same CMA platform as the Volvo XC40, and next year's Polestar 3 SUV—which will be built in South Carolina—uses the group's SPA2 platform.

Pete Allen, head of Polestar UK R&D (blue shirt) stands behind a Polestar 5 prototype and talks to some assembled journalists. (credit: Polestar)

That involves some compromises, though; those platforms were designed to be built in high volumes, with attributes like ride comfort prioritized over handling prowess. That's fine for, say, a luxury SUV—even a sporty one. But if you were a brand wanting to build a competitor for the Porsche Taycan, you might want to start from scratch.

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Ready for your eye scan? Worldcoin launches—but not quite worldwide

Enlarge (credit: FT Montage/Bloomberg)

Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency project, the Worldcoin Foundation, is rolling out its services globally even as the company cofounded by the OpenAI chief faces regulatory pushback in the US.

The Berlin and San Francisco-based start-up announced on Monday that its technology, including its Worldcoin token—a cryptocurrency traceable on the blockchain that requires users to first prove their identity—will be available in 35 cities across 20 countries.

Central to the effort is an eye-scanning physical “orb,” which Worldcoin’s founders say is necessary for a future in which distinguishing between humans and robots becomes increasingly challenging due to a surge in artificial intelligence technology. Once users have proved they are not robots, they can be issued one of the company’s tokens.

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The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives

Enlarge / A Z16 Mainframe.

Mainframe computers are often seen as ancient machines—practically dinosaurs. But mainframes, which are purpose-built to process enormous amounts of data, are still extremely relevant today. If they’re dinosaurs, they’re T-Rexes, and desktops and server computers are puny mammals to be trodden underfoot.

It’s estimated that there are 10,000 mainframes in use today. They’re used almost exclusively by the largest companies in the world, including two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, eight of the top 10 insurers, seven of the top 10 global retailers, and eight of the top 10 telecommunications companies. And most of those mainframes come from IBM.

In this explainer, we’ll look at the IBM mainframe computer—what it is, how it works, and why it’s still going strong after over 50 years.

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Understanding the octopus and its relationships with humans

A giant Pacific octopus shows its colors at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium)

While other octopus books study the animal's behavior in aquaria or tropical waters worldwide, Dr. David Scheel, a professor of Marine Biology at Alaska Pacific University, takes a unique approach in his first book, Many Things Under a Rock. He travels to extreme places in the Pacific Northwest where one may not expect these creatures to live, but they have for approximately 330 million years

“I think it is a little surprising to some people that octopuses live in cold water,” Scheel told Ars. “It might be because we're used to seeing them in aquariums, and we think of aquariums as tropical locations, although you can run cold water aquariums as well.”

Personal experience

In Many Things Under a Rock, Scheel regales the reader with anecdotes of his time researching cephalopods in Alaska and Canada. From yearly tracking of octopus dens to discovering new octopus “cities,” Scheel’s chapters give engaging and informative stories on marine biology. Between these chapters are Indigenous stories about octopuses in the Pacific Northwest, revealing their influence on the area's native tribes.

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Two great Star Trek shows revive the lost art of the gimmicky crossover episode

Enlarge / Tawny Newsome (left) and Jack Quaid reprising their roles as Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler... but in real life this time. (credit: Paramount)

The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, much like the first one, has been fun at least partly because the show itself is not all that new or strange.

The characters and visuals and specific plot constructs are new, but at its heart the show is a painstaking reconstruction of The Next Generation formula from Star Trek's 90s-era creative and commercial peak: ensemble cast, primarily episodic storytelling with lightly serialized character development and recurring arcs, and a willingness to mix high-concept sci-fi with just the right amount of silliness. It's also very good at taking old Star Trek tropes—the transporter accident, the disease-on-the-ship, the talky courtroom thriller about the nature of humanity—and making them feel fresh again.

Episode 7, which went up early this weekend to coincide with a Comic-Con screening, exhumes and expertly executes yet another shopworn trope, something we haven't seen on Star Trek since the days when Quark might show up on the viewscreen of the Enterprise-D: the crossover episode. And despite the wide gap between Strange New Worlds and the animated Lower Decks, the blending of the two shows' disparate styles comes together better than any gimmicky attempt at cross-promotion has any right to.

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Here’s the trailer for the live-action One Piece we’ve been waiting for

Inaki Godoy stars as Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece, the Netflix live-action adaption of the popular Japanese manga and anime franchise.

Netflix has a mixed track record when it comes to adapting beloved Japanese anime series into live action formats. I liked 2021's Cowboy Bebop more than most diehard fans—just for the pitch-perfect casting alone, despite the fact that the fight choreography left a lot to be desired. It was certainly better than the live-action versions of Fullmetal Alchemist (another of my personal anime faves), but Netflix opted not to renew Cowboy Bebop. So we'll never know if it would have worked out its issues, although the cameo appearance tacked onto the finale of a particularly grating version of Radical Ed didn't bode well.

Given that checkered history, one could be forgiven for feelings of trepidation about the streaming platform's forthcoming live-action series adaptation of One Piece, a hugely popular manga and anime series created by Eiichiro Oda. Who doesn't love pirates? The first trailer debuted at San Diego Comic-Con, and honestly, the live-action series looks great. Then again, so did the trailers for Cowboy Bebop.

The original One Piece manga debuted in 1997, following the adventures of one Monkey D. Luffy, who heads a motley crew called the Straw Hat Pirates. There's swordsman Roronoa Zoro, thief and navigator Nami, sniper and compulsive liar Usopp, and a cook named Sanji. They're searching for the legendary One Piece, a mythical treasure that would make anyone who possesses it King of the Pirates. Monkey wants to be the Pirate King, but so do a host of other pirates with their own ships and crews.

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Long-forgotten frozen soil sample offers a warning for the future

Enlarge / Water and sediment pour off the melting margin of the Greenland ice sheet. (credit: Jason Edwards/Getty Images)

About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun’s rays on the island’s northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea level was much higher then, between 20 and 40 feet above today’s levels. Around the world, land that today is home to hundreds of millions of people was under water.

Scientists have known for awhile that the Greenland ice sheet had mostly disappeared at some point in the past million years, but not precisely when.

In a new study in the journal Science, we determined the date, using frozen soil extracted during the Cold War from beneath a nearly mile-thick section of the Greenland ice sheet.

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The next Mazda MX-5 Miata might be an electric vehicle

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Mazda)

The fifth-generation Mazda MX-5 Miata may well be a battery-electric vehicle. Motortrend reports that the Japanese automaker, builder of one of the Internet's most beloved vehicles, has decided the next version will be electrified, although it's still deciding to what extent. Mazda is on the way to electrifying its entire product range by 2030, but the next MX-5 is due sooner than that and should be in showrooms in 2025.

Since 1989, the MX-5 has reminded drivers worldwide that you don't need masses of power and torque to enjoy driving. Across four generations of cars, the recipe has remained constant: two seats, with an engine in the front driving the wheels at the back—preferably via a manual gearbox. Low mass has always been a Miata virtue, endowing the car with not just precise handling but also an abstemious appetite for tires and fuel.

As the former owner of a first-gen (aka NA) Miata, I am always amazed upon driving a new one (currently the ND or fourth-gen) to find that Mazda's engineers have kept the ride and handling so similar. Wheels and brakes have gotten larger, and the gearbox has added an extra forward ratio, but the only unfamiliar bit to someone from 20 or 30 years ago would be the infotainment screen, which now brings the welcome addition of CarPlay.

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Infant deaths surge in Texas after abortion ban

Enlarge / (From L) Plaintiffs Damla Karsan, Austin Dennard, Samantha Casiano, Taylor Edwards, Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Molly Duane and Amanda Zurawski attend a press conference outside the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, on July 20, 2023. (credit: Getty | SUZANNE CORDEIRO)

Deaths of babies born in Texas increased 11.5 percent in 2022, the year after the state banned abortion after six weeks, a period before most women know they are pregnant.

In 2022, some 2,200 infants died, according to data obtained by CNN through a public information request. That is 227 more deaths than the state saw in the previous year, before the restrictive law went into effect.

Infant deaths due to severe genetic and birth defects rose 21.6 percent.

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Banks serving as guinea pigs for Federal Reserve’s instant payments system

Enlarge (credit: fatido | iStock Unreleased)

Yesterday, the US Federal Reserve officially launched FedNow, a new system rolled out to 35 early-adopting banks and credit unions for processing instant payments between financial institutions. The Fed's goal is to eventually connect more than 9,000 banks and credit unions nationwide, tossing out the old payments system and supporting faster payment processing between all US institutions.

If FedNow becomes popular enough, it could one day make trouble for apps like PayPal and Venmo, which serve as intermediaries to make fast payments between banks. Cash apps could eventually seem so slow or unnecessary that they become obsolete. For now, peer-to-peer payments apps seem safe, though, as analysts told NBC News that FedNow is "likely to benefit consumers and small businesses the most."

"The Federal Reserve built the FedNow Service to help make everyday payments over the coming years faster and more convenient," Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said in a press release. "Over time, as more banks choose to use this new tool, the benefits to individuals and businesses will include enabling a person to immediately receive a paycheck or a company to instantly access funds when an invoice is paid."

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Dolphin emulator abandons Steam release plans after Nintendo legal threat

Enlarge / Sorry, Dolphin fans. No Steam release for you. (credit: Dolphin Team)

A few months ago, the developers behind the Wii/GameCube emulator Dolphin said they were indefinitely postponing a planned Steam release, after Steam-maker Valve received a request from Nintendo to take down the emulator's "coming soon" page. This week, after taking time to consult with a lawyer, the team says it has decided to abandon its Steam distribution plans altogether.

"Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it," the team wrote in a blog post Thursday. "In the end, Valve is the one running the Steam store front, and they have the right to allow or disallow anything they want on said storefront for any reason."

The Dolphin team also takes pains to note that this decision was not the result of an official DMCA notice sent by Nintendo. Instead, Valve reached out to Nintendo to ask about the planned Dolphin release, at which point a Nintendo lawyer cited the DMCA in asking Valve to take down the page.

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The ‘90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

Enlarge (credit: Banj Edwards | Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

"When checking the system this morning, I noticed your account logged in for over 20 hours," begins a December 1998 email from the president of my dial-up Internet service provider (ISP) at the time. "Our service is unlimited, but we ask that you actually be using the connection while logged in."

Today, when it seems like everyone is online 24/7 through smartphones and broadband, I'd be weird if I wasn't online for 20 hours straight. But 1998 in Raleigh, North Carolina, was different. In an age of copper telephone lines and dial-up modems, Internet access wasn't usually an always-on situation for a home user in the US. Each occupied telephone line meant another ISP customer couldn't use it—and no one could call you, either.

But I'm getting ahead of myself—why do I have an email from 1998?

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Tesla revenue grows to $25 billion, but margin shrinks in Q2 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich)

Tesla reported strong sales and revenues for the second quarter of 2023. The automaker built 479,700 electric vehicles during the period, delivering 466,140. Selling those cars brought in $21.3 billion in revenue, a 46 percent increase year over year. But the company's once-fat margins are shrinking, and Tesla shares have fallen 5 percent in trading this morning.

Tesla's total Q2 revenues also grew year over year by 47 percent to $24.9 billion. The largest increase was seen in Tesla's solar panel and battery storage side of the business, which grew 74 percent, year over year, to $1.5 billion. Tesla actually deployed fewer GWh of storage for Q2 versus Q1 2023, although at 3.7 GWh, that's still a 222 percent increase year over year. The company blamed high interest rates for a year-over-year decline in solar panel installations.

Services and revenues grew by 47 percent, year over year, to $2.2 billion. This budget line includes Tesla's Supercharger network, and it's possible that some of the growth here reflects payments from rival automakers like Ford, General Motors, Volvo, Rivian, and Polestar, each of which signed an agreement to adopt Tesla's charging plug to gain access to the Supercharger network for their own customers.

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Meta tells news publishers to talk to the hand

Enlarge / A worker picks up trash in front of the new logo in front of Meta's headquarters on October 28, 2021, in Menlo Park, Calif. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Meta is shunning the news business, giving lower priority to current affairs and politics on its social media platforms while refusing to engage with efforts from governments to make the US tech giant pay more to media organizations.

Facebook’s parent company, after years of attempting to placate powerful publishers by funding nonprofit journalism projects and striking deals with groups like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, is toughening its stance toward the sector, according to people familiar with the company’s strategies.

Meta’s latest snub came this month when the company launched Threads, a text-based app to challenge its struggling rival Twitter. Threads drew in 100 million users within a record five days of launch, linking profiles to existing accounts on Meta’s popular photo-sharing app Instagram.

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Unity launches visionOS beta, opening the doors for existing apps and games

Enlarge / What the Golf?, a popular Apple Arcade game, running in shared 3D space with other visionOS applications. (credit: Unity)

Starting today, some developers can use the popular software Unity to make apps and games for Apple's upcoming Vision Pro headset.

A partnership between Unity and Apple was first announced during Apple's WWDC 2023 keynote last month, in the same segment the Vision Pro and visionOS were introduced. At that time, Apple noted that developers could start making visionOS apps immediately using SwiftUI in a new beta version of the company's Xcode IDE for Macs, but it also promised that Unity would begin supporting Vision Pro this month.

Now it's here—albeit in a slow, limited rollout to developers that sign up for a beta. Unity says it is admitting a wide range of developers into the program gradually over the coming weeks or months but hasn't gone into much detail about the criteria it's using to pick people other than not solely focusing on makers of AAA games.

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Pikmin 4 review: Falling in love with micromanagement

Enlarge / Run for your life! And also the lives of those adorable Pikmin!

When it comes down to it, most video games are elaborate exercises in time management. Every time you fail a tough challenge in a game, you don't just lose in-game resources (lives, items, stats, physical progress on the map, etc.); you also lose the real-world time you put into that attempt.

The hours you put into a game are the only truly irreplaceable resource you're putting at risk. And you don't have to be a professional speedrunner to want to spend that time wisely. That usually means getting through the game's challenges and goals as quickly as possible (while nonetheless savoring the game's characters, story, and environments, of course).

Pikmin 4 is more explicit than most games about making sure the player is making the most of every in-game second. The game is constantly hectoring you to maximize your "dandori," basically a fancy word for multitasking. If you're not constantly splitting your dozens of flower-like Pikmin into three or four separate groups—each with its own separate subtask—the game goes out of its way to make you feel like a time-wasting slacker who, ironically, spends too much time stopping to smell the flowers.

The whole thing should be stressful. But there's something surprisingly endearing about Pikmin 4's chill version of multitasking that kept me eagerly coming back for more gentle lessons in efficiency.

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Prime Video drops Wheel of Time S2 trailer ahead of San Diego Comic-Con

The Wheel of Time, starring Rosamund Pike as Moiraine, returns to Prime Video for its second season in September.

The planned Wheel of Time panel at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend has understandably been canceled in light of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in Hollywood. So Prime Video released the first full trailer for the show's second season today, and it's full of the eye-popping visuals we've come to expect from this lavish adaptation of Robert Jordan's series of fantasy novels.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

As I've written previously, the series centers on Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), a member of a powerful, all-woman organization called the Aes Sedai. Magic, known as the One Power, is divided into male (saidin) and female (saidar) flavors. The latter is the province of the Aes Sedai. Long ago, a great evil called the Dark One caused the saidin to become tainted, such that most men who show an ability to channel that magic go mad. It's the job of the Aes Sedai to track down such men and strip them of their powers. There is also an ancient prophecy concerning the Dragon Reborn: the reincarnation of a person who will save or destroy humanity.

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Behind the scenes: How we host Ars Technica, part 1

Enlarge / Take a peek inside the Ars vault with us! (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

A bit over three years ago, just before COVID hit, we ran a long piece on the tools and tricks that make Ars function without a physical office. Ars has spent decades perfecting how to get things done as a distributed remote workforce, and as it turns out, we were even more fortunate than we realized because that distributed nature made working through the pandemic more or less a non-event for us. While other companies were scrambling to get work-from-home arranged for their employees, we kept on trucking without needing to do anything different.

However, there was a significant change that Ars went through right around the time that article was published. January 2020 marked our transition away from physical infrastructure and into a wholly cloud-based hosting environment. After years of great service from the folks at Server Central (now Deft), the time had come for a leap into the clouds—and leap we did.

There were a few big reasons to make the change, but the ones that mattered most were feature- and cost-related. Ars fiercely believes in running its own tech stack, mainly because we can iterate new features faster that way, and our community platform is unique among other Condé Nast brands. So when the rest of the company was either moving to or already on Amazon Web Services (AWS), we could hop on the bandwagon and take advantage of Condé’s enterprise pricing. That—combined with no longer having to maintain physical reserve infrastructure to absorb big traffic spikes and being able to rely on scaling—fundamentally changed the equation for us.

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Microsoft 365’s Copilot assistant for businesses comes with a hefty price tag

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

A few months ago, Microsoft previewed Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new service that promised to integrate generative AI features into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and the other productivity apps formerly known as Microsoft Office. Among other things, Copilot promises to automate the creation of documents and emails, summarize meeting notes, and assist in the analysis of Excel data.

Microsoft has just announced pricing for the Copilot features, and it isn't cheap. Copilot will cost an extra $30 per user per month on top of whatever your business is already paying for Microsoft 365—in many cases, this will double or even triple your monthly costs. Copilot can be added to Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Premium ($12.50 and $22 per user per month, respectively) or to Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 accounts for enterprises ($36 or $57 per user per month). It can't be added to the cheaper Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan or to any home plans.

The relatively high cost is likely related to the high server costs for running these kinds of generative AI models. Copilot also draws context from the other emails, documents, and other files in your business's Microsoft 365 cloud, so each business that Microsoft supports will have a slightly different data set that it will need to be able to draw from.

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NHTSA investigating Tesla Autopilot after yet another fatal crash

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance feature is the subject of yet another federal safety investigation. Although the details are scarce, Reuters reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into a fatal crash in California involving a 2018 Tesla Model 3 sedan. This follows another safety investigation that was opened by NHTSA in March concerning a fatal crash of a 2014 Tesla Model S, also in California.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that the cars his company makes are the "safest car[s] on the road," but there have been hundreds of fatal crashes involving Tesla electric vehicles since 2013, and at least 32 deaths in the US and another three abroad have occurred while Autopilot was active.

On its website, Tesla promotes Autopilot as a safety feature, writing:

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Typo leaks millions of US military emails to Mali web operator

Enlarge (credit: FT Montage/EPA)

Millions of US military emails have been misdirected to Mali through a “typo leak” that has exposed highly sensitive information, including diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and the travel details of top officers.

Despite repeated warnings over a decade, a steady flow of email traffic continues to the .ML domain, the country identifier for Mali, as a result of people mistyping .MIL, the suffix to all US military email addresses.

The problem was first identified almost a decade ago by Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch Internet entrepreneur who has a contract to manage Mali’s country domain.

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Former astronaut says it’s “extremely important” to study artificial gravity

Enlarge / Garrett Reisman, center, has plenty of experience living without gravity. (credit: NASA)

A little more than 15 years ago, astronaut Garrett Reisman was among a crew of seven who launched into orbit aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. The shuttle remained attached to the Space Station for nearly two weeks, but when the orbiter departed, it left Reisman behind for an extended stay.

During his time at the station, Reisman would often pass through the Harmony module, which serves as a corridor connecting laboratory modules built by NASA and the European and Japanese space agencies. Sometimes, he would look up and see a small placard that said, "To CAM." The arrow, however, pointed out into space.

"When I was up there on the space station, there was still the sign that says, 'To CAM,'" Reisman said in an interview. "But there's just a closed hatch. It was tragic. It was just kind of taunting me when I saw that because I think that could have been one of the most important scientific discoveries that we made."

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Ford gives the F-150 Lightning a big price cut as production ramps up

Enlarge / Ford is finishing upgrades to its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center that will allow it to build 150,000 F-150 Lightning electric trucks a year, by the end of this year. (credit: Ford)

Ford's F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck just got significantly cheaper. On Monday, the automaker announced hefty price cuts across the F-150 Lightning lineup, cutting between $6,079 and $9,979 from the truck's MSRP. The cuts reverse some recent price increases, although the commercial-focused F-150 Lightning Pro is still about $10,000 more expensive than when Ford first launched the Lightning in 2021.

Ford says that increased capacity at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan is responsible for the price cuts, along with cheaper raw materials for the electric trucks' lithium-ion batteries.

"Shortly after launching the F-150 Lightning, rapidly rising material costs, supply constraints and other factors drove up the cost of the EV truck for Ford and our customers," said Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer of Ford Model e (Ford's EV division). "We've continued to work in the background to improve accessibility and affordability to help to lower prices for our customers and shorten the wait times for their new F-150 Lightning."

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After months of competition complaints, Sony agrees to 10-year Call of Duty deal

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Microsoft marching toward a final Activision deal after mooting competition concerns from Sony and the FTC. (credit: Activision)

Sony and Microsoft signed a binding agreement over the weekend ensuring that Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation for at least 10 years after Microsoft's proposed purchase of Activision is complete. The agreement, which Sony had resisted signing for months, effectively ends a bitter battle between the two console giants over the alleged anti-competitive effects of Microsoft's $69 billion Activision purchase, which was first proposed back in January 2022.

The new agreement also effectively moots one of the most significant arguments made by the FTC in its federal case to block the merger, which failed to earn an FTC-sought injunction last week. And it's likely not a coincidence that the agreement with Sony was announced just one day after a federal appeals court denied the FTC's request for an appeal over that injunction decision.

The deal, as announced over the weekend by Xbox Chief Phil Spencer and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, doesn't seem to include a promise of PlayStation access to any of Activision Blizzard's other popular franchises (including Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Overwatch, Diablo, and more). But the fate of Call of Duty has long been the major focus of both Sony and regulators. Court documents revealed that Call of Duty alone is worth at least $800 million in annual revenue to Sony and that up to 20 million PlayStation owners spend a significant portion of their console playtime on the series (including 1 million PlayStation owners who literally play no other games on the system).

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How long will the last Intel Macs be supported? macOS Sonoma gives us some hints

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

A year ago, we compiled a model list of Macs spanning over two decades, complete with their launch dates, discontinuation dates, and all the available information about the macOS updates each model received. We were trying to answer two questions: How long can Mac owners reasonably expect to receive software updates when they buy a new computer? And were Intel Macs being dropped more aggressively now that the Apple Silicon transition was in full swing?

The answer to the second question was a tentative "yes," and now that we know the official support list for macOS Sonoma, the trendline is clear.

Macs introduced between 2009 and 2015 could expect to receive seven or eight years of macOS updates—that is, new major versions with new features, like Ventura or Sonoma—plus another two years of security-only updates that fix vulnerabilities and keep Safari up to date. Macs released in 2016 and 2017 are only receiving about six years' worth of macOS updates, plus another two years of security updates. That's about a two-year drop, compared to most Macs released between 2009 and 2013.

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It’s crafty, fish-stealing sharks vs. anglers in NatGeo’s Bull Shark Bandits

Enlarge / Spydro camera image of a bull shark stealing a fish on the team's line. (credit: National Geographic)

Weipa is a small coastal mining town in Queensland, located in northeastern Australia, particularly favored by sports fisherman because of its annual competition, the Weipa Fishing Classic. But in recent years, fishermen have reported an increasing number of incidents where local bull sharks are pulling off audacious underwater raids, literally waiting until a fish is hooked and chomping it off the line. Some fisherman estimate they can lose as much as 70 percent of their catch to the sharks, which seem to specifically target fishing boats.

(Some spoilers for the documentary below the gallery.)

It's atypical behavior for bull sharks and it raises an interesting question: is this evidence that this species of shark—known (a bit unfairly) in the popular imagination for being aggressive "mindless killers"—are more intelligent than previously assumed? That's one of the questions that shark biologists Johan Gustafson and Mariel Familiar Lopez set out to answer, and their initial field work has been documented for posterity in Bull Shark Bandits, part of National Geographic's 2023 SHARKFEST programming. SHARKFEST is four full weeks of "explosive, hair-raising and celebratory shark programming that ... showcase the captivating science, power and beauty of these magnificent animals," per the official description. 

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Bizarre ancient sea creature brings evolution mystery to the surface

Enlarge / That blue tube is actually a very close relative of vertebrates. (credit: Gerard Soury)

Beneath the waves, there are strange, almost alien creatures that raise questions about the evolution of life on Earth and our own earliest origins. The answers might be hiding in tunicates.

Tunicates are filter-feeding invertebrates that include sea squirts and salps. The more common ascidiacean species are sessile and attach to rocks or the seafloor, while the appendicularian species swim freely. Yet all of them spawn as larvae that vaguely resemble tadpoles. Motile tunicates tend to grow into something that looks like a larger version of the larva. The others eventually faceplant onto a surface and absorb their own tails while morphing into a sessile, tubelike form with two siphons.

Despite all this weirdness, there is now strong evidence that tunicates are the closest relatives to vertebrates, but a mystery still surrounds them. How did they evolve, and what did they evolve from? A 500 million-year-old fossil is now telling us more about the evolution of these peculiar life forms.

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The heat wave scorching the US is a self-perpetuating monster

Enlarge / The sun sets during a heatwave in Peoria, Arizona, July 11, 2023. (credit: Ash Ponders/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Just weeks after a third of the US population was hit with air-quality alerts thanks to smoke from climate-change-fueled fires in Canada, 100 million Americans are now under heat alerts. A cap of extra-hot air, known as a heat dome, has settled over the West and South, pushing temperatures relentlessly higher.

The map below shows excessive heat warnings in purple and heat advisories in orange, and the forecast is that things will get worse through the weekend. Highs will stay above 110° Fahrenheit in Phoenix; California’s Death Valley is flirting with 130°; and Texas’ grid is struggling to keep the AC on.

(credit: NWS)

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So long, Calibri: Microsoft has settled on a new font for its Office apps

Enlarge / Microsoft's new "Aptos" font family. (credit: Microsoft)

Two years ago, Microsoft announced its plans to move away from using Calibri as the default typeface for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and the other apps in the suite formerly known as Microsoft Office. The company introduced five candidates for replacement fonts, and a winner has emerged: a font family called Aptos, formerly known as Bierstadt.

Microsoft has never laid out in so many words why it feels it needs to move away from Calibri, though today's announcement implies that Aptos was made with high-resolution, high-density displays in mind. Calibri replaced Times New Roman as the suite's default font in Office 2007, at a time before "Retina" displays and when 1024×768 and 1280×800 screens were still the norm—a ClearType font, Calibri itself was a response to the shift from CRT to LCD screens.

Aptos was created by Steve Matteson, who is also responsible for Windows 3.1's original TrueType fonts (including Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New) as well as Segoe, which has been Windows' default system font since Vista and is also used for Microsoft's current logo. Given Matteson's history with Microsoft, choosing Aptos over the others feels like the safest possible choice.

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