Technology
Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is another big step forward for Linux on Apple Silicon Macs
Enlarge / RIP, Neofetch. (credit: Kevin Purdy)
Asahi Linux, the project that aims to bring desktop Linux to Apple hardware with Apple silicon—the M series of chips—is out with Fedora Asahi Remix 40. More hardware features of Apple devices are supported, the Fedora Linux 40-based distro ships with KDE's new Plasma 6 desktop, and untold numbers of bugs are squashed, to be replaced with reams more.
Fedora Asahi Remix is a "fully integrated distro," according to the Asahi team, and you can "expect a solid and high-quality experience without any unwanted surprises." It supports all the M1 and M2 devices in the MacBook, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and iMac lines. It's OpenGL 4.6 and OpenGL ES 3.2 certified, and comes with "the best Linux laptop audio you've ever heard."
So, should you install it on your Mac? Keep scrolling down Asahi's release page and check the "Device support" section. Still missing from most M-series Apple devices are support for Thunderbolt and USB4, built-in microphones, and Touch ID, as well as USB-C display support. Speakers are not supported on the iMac. And HDMI audio is in rough shape, being able to "break audio on the system completely."
Stack Overflow users sabotage their posts after OpenAI deal
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
On Monday, Stack Overflow and OpenAI announced a new API partnership that will integrate Stack Overflow's technical content with OpenAI's ChatGPT AI assistant. However, the deal has sparked controversy among Stack Overflow's user community, with many expressing anger and protest over the use of their contributed content to support and train AI models.
"I hate this. I'm just going to delete/deface my answers one by one," wrote one user on sister site Stack Exchange. "I don't care if this is against your silly policies, because as this announcement shows, your policies can change at a whim without prior consultation of your stakeholders. You don't care about your users, I don't care about you."
Stack Overflow is a popular question-and-answer site for software developers that allows users to ask and answer technical questions related to coding. The site has a large community of developers who contribute knowledge and expertise to help others solve programming problems. Over the past decade, Stack Overflow has become a heavily utilized resource for many developers seeking solutions to common coding challenges.
The Volvo VNL, a heavy truck purpose-designed for North American roads
Enlarge / America sends five times more freight by truck than rail, so it's important to start making those trucks more fuel efficient and safer. (credit: Volvo Trucks North America)
A while ago we checked out Super Truck II, a Department of Energy program that has been challenging the makers of Class 8 heavy trucks—the ones that haul up to 80,000 lbs (36.3 tonnes) of freight. Truck companies like Daimler Trucks North America and Volvo Trucks North America were challenged to build a big rig that used 50 percent less fuel than the machines on the road in 2017, and they stepped up.
It'll be a while before all of the efficiency improvements make their way onto production trucks, as that program has only just come to a close. But the truck makers are already starting to apply some of the lessons to production vehicles. Like Volvo's new VNL, a Class 8 long-haul truck that's been purpose-built just for our market.
"It's replacing the previous generation that had been around for several decades," explained Keith Brandis, VP of systems and solutions at VTNA. That was based on a global cab concept and design, where this was a completely new clean sheet for North America."
Solid-state polymer heat pump gets rid of the heat itself
Enlarge (credit: Jorg Greuel)
Heat pumps are the most energy-efficient way of controlling indoor temperature. By moving heat between locations, they avoid the inefficiencies of generating heat in the first place. But that doesn't mean they can't be made more efficient.
Most current heat pumps rely on materials that exhibit large changes in temperature in response to changing pressures, but the energy required to pressurize them gets lost when they're cycled back to a low-pressure state, absorbing heat from their surroundings. That has gotten people interested in electrocaloric devices, where changes in temperature are driven by storing charges in a material. Since it essentially acts as a big capacitor, much of the electrical energy involved can be pulled back out as the system cycles.
But capacitors aren't especially mobile, so electrocaloric systems tended to use fluids to move heat into and out of the capacitor as it cycles. Now, however, researchers have developed an electrocaloric system that moves itself between hot and cold environments, radically simplifying the system and eliminating some of the energy required for it to operate. They even demonstrate it effectively cooling a computer chip.
Leaked FBI email stresses need for warrantless surveillance of Americans
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino)
A Federal Bureau of Investigation official recently urged employees to "look for ways" to conduct warrantless surveillance on US residents, an internal email obtained by Wired shows. FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate's email was reportedly sent on April 20, the same day President Biden signed a bill that was criticized as a major expansion of warrantless surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Abbate's email seems to argue that FBI employees should make frequent use of warrantless surveillance on US people in order to justify the continued existence of the program. "To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements," Abbate wrote, according to Wired.
Abbate oversees all FBI domestic and international investigative and intelligence activities. His email made reference to a new requirement that FBI personnel obtain prior approval from an FBI supervisor or attorney before making queries about US people.
Dell warns of “incident” that may have leaked customers’ personal info
For years, Dell customers have been on the receiving end of scam calls from people claiming to be part of the computer maker’s support team. The scammers call from a valid Dell phone number, know the customer's name and address, and use information that should be known only to Dell and the customer, including the service tag number, computer model, and serial number associated with a past purchase. Then the callers attempt to scam the customer into making a payment, installing questionable software, or taking some other potentially harmful action.
Recently, according to numerous social media posts such as this one, Dell notified an unspecified number of customers that names, physical addresses, and hardware and order information associated with previous purchases was somehow connected to an “incident involving a Dell portal, which contains a database with limited types of customer information.” The vague wording, which Dell is declining to elaborate on, appears to confirm an April 29 post by Daily Dark Web reporting the offer to sell purported personal information of 49 million people who bought Dell gear from 2017 to 2024.
Ad posted to Breach Forums, as reported by Daily Dark Web. (credit: Daily Dark Web)
The customer information affected is identical in both the Dell notification and the for-sale ad, which was posted to, and later removed from, Breach Forums, an online bazaar for people looking to buy or sell stolen data. The customer information stolen, according to both Dell and the ad, included:
Discover why the world went quiet in new A Quiet Place: Day One trailer
Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn must escape a Manhattan overrun by aliens in A Quiet Place: Day One.
Invading aliens transform a bustling New York City into a silent wasteland in the latest trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel to the first two films in the hugely successful horror franchise.
(Mild spoilers for A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II below.)
As reported previously, the original film began in medias res over a month after an alien invasion set in early 2020. Sightless extraterrestrial creatures wiped out most of the humans and animals on Earth. They hunt by sound thanks to their hypersensitive hearing and are difficult to kill because they sport tough armored skin. The film centered on the Abbott family, struggling to survive a few months after the initial invasion. Dad Lee (John Krasinski) was an engineer focused on keeping his family alive each day. Wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) was a doctor, pregnant with their fourth child.
The 2024 Moto G Stylus is a $400 mid-ranger with vegan leather
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The Moto G Stylus 2024. [credit: Motorola ]
Motorola's latest phone is the 2024 Moto G Stylus 5G. For fans of pen input there isn't much out there other than this and the Galaxy S Ultra line, but for $400 you can get a phone with a stowable stylus.
The design is just a bit interesting thanks to the "vegan leather" (that's a type of plastic) back, which gives the phone some personality. You get flat aluminum sides, a flat screen, and a hole-punch camera. Android does not have a lot of built-in stylus features, so you'll mostly be relying on whatever Motorola has cooked up; the website only shows a "Moto Note" app and the ability to send your drawings over instant messaging, plus there's whatever you can find on the Play Store.
This is a mid-range phone, so for the SoC, we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. That's four Arm Cortex A78 cores and four Cortex A55 cores, built with a quite modern 4 nm process. There's a 6.7-inch, 120 Hz, 2400×1080 OLED display, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 5000 mAh battery with 30 W wired charging and 15 W wireless charging. Pictures will come from a 50 MP main camera, 13 MP wide-angle, or a front 32 MP camera. There's a MicroSD slot, headphone jack, in-screen fingerprint reader, stowable stylus (of course), and NFC. Wi-Fi only goes up to 802.11ac. That's "Wi-Fi 5" and is pretty old, but it will get the job done, I guess. The "IP52" dust- and water-resistant rating is also not great, promising only protection from some water drops at certain angles.
Apple’s plastic-free packaging means pack-in logo stickers are going away
Enlarge / Many different Apple stickers from many different products and eras. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
As a noted sticker enthusiast, I’m always on the lookout for news at the intersection of stickers and technology. Which is why this report from 9to5Mac caught my eye: Apple is apparently starting to wind down its decades-long practice of including Apple logo stickers in the box with all of its products.
If you buy a new iPad Air or iPad Pro, you’ll be able to get some stickers if you ask the people at the Apple Store to include them (stores will get a “limited quantity” of stickers they can distribute on request). But the little sticker insert that has come with Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, and other devices and accessories for as long as I can remember will stop being one of the default pack-ins.
Apple is apparently cutting down on its sticker distribution to help meet its environmental goals. The stickers are some of the last bits of plastic included in most modern Apple packaging; in recent years, even the plastic backing layer for the stickers has been replaced with wax paper instead. This happened around the same time that the inner layer of packaging wrapped around new Apple devices also shifted from plastic to paper and when plastic-sealed boxes gave way to tear-away paper adhesive strips.
Vermont close to becoming first state to charge Big Oil for climate damage
Enlarge / Ripton, VT - July 16, 2023: Ethan Poploski stood in front of his family's home, which had been destroyed by a landslide overnight. (credit: Boston Globe / Contributor | Boston Globe)
Vermont may soon become the first state to force fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share to cover recovery efforts from climate change damages. This week, the state's potentially groundbreaking law passed a preliminary vote in the Senate, where a final vote is expected soon that would likely send the law to the governor's desk. And there's reportedly broad enough support to override any attempt to veto the law.
By passing a law that mimics the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program—which "forces the parties responsible for the contamination" of lands "to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led cleanup work"—Vermont hopes to create a Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program.
If enacted, the law could end up costing fossil fuel companies billions for climate damages in Vermont alone and serve as a model for other states similarly seeking to combat their worst impacts.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip
Enlarge / Elon Musk, in Paris, France, on Friday, June 16, 2023. Musk predicted his Neuralink Corp. would carry out its first brain implant later that year. The first implantation took place in January 2024. (credit: Getty | Nathan Laine)
The first invasive brain chip that Neuralink embedded into a human brain has malfunctioned, with neuron-surveilling threads appearing to have become dislodged from the participant's brain, the company revealed in a blog post Wednesday.
It's unclear what caused the threads to become "retracted" from the brain, how many have retracted, or if the displaced threads pose a safety risk. Neuralink, the brain-computer interface startup run by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Ars. The company said in its blog post that the problem began in late February, but it has since been able to compensate for the lost data to some extent by modifying its algorithm.
Neuralink touts that its invasive implant includes 64 flexible threads carrying a total of 1,024 electrodes that can detect neuronal activity. Those flexible threads—described as thinner than a human hair—are inserted individually into the brain by the company's proprietary surgical robot. The goal is for the threads to be placed near neurons of interest so that signals detected by the electrodes can be recorded and decoded into intended actions, such as moving a cursor on a computer screen.
Max, Disney+, Hulu ad-free bundle coming amid high streaming cancellation rates
Enlarge / Streaming services are assembling... into a bundled package. (credit: Marvel Entertainment/YouTube)
Sometime this summer, US customers will be able to buy a subscription to Max, Disney+, and Hulu together for a discounted price. The Wednesday announcement from respective owners Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Disney comes as the streaming industry combats a competitive subscription marketplace burdened by constant cancellations.
WBD and Disney didn't provide a specific release date for the package but said that people will be able to buy it from "any of the three streaming platform’s websites offered as both an ad-supported and ad-free plan.”
The companies didn't confirm a price, but the bundle should be cheaper than all three services combined, which would start at $47.97 per month for no ads and $25.97/month with ads.
A crushing backlash to Apple’s new iPad ad
Enlarge / A screenshot of the Apple iPad ad. (credit: Apple via YouTube)
An advert by Apple for its new iPad tablet showing musical instruments, artistic tools, and games being crushed by a giant hydraulic press has been attacked for cultural insensitivity in an online backlash.
The one-minute video was launched by Apple chief executive Tim Cook to support its new range of iPads, the first time that the US tech giant has overhauled the range for two years as it seeks to reverse faltering sales.
The campaign—soundtracked by Sonny and Cher’s 1971 hit All I Ever Need Is You—is designed to show how much Apple has been able to squeeze into the thinner tablet. The ad was produced in-house by Apple’s creative team, according to trade press reports.
NASA confirms “independent review” of Orion heat shield issue
Enlarge / The Orion spacecraft after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Artemis I mission. (credit: NASA)
NASA has asked a panel of outside experts to review the agency's investigation into the unexpected loss of material from the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft on a test flight in 2022.
Chunks of charred material cracked and chipped away from Orion's heat shield during reentry at the end of the 25-day unpiloted Artemis I mission in December 2022. Engineers inspecting the capsule after the flight found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry stripped away pieces of the heat shield as temperatures built up to 5,000° Fahrenheit.
This was the most significant discovery on the Artemis I, an unpiloted test flight that took the Orion capsule around the Moon for the first time. The next mission in NASA's Artemis program, Artemis II, is scheduled for launch late next year on a test flight to send four astronauts around the far side of the Moon.
Professor sues Meta to allow release of feed-killing tool for Facebook
Enlarge (credit: themotioncloud/Getty Images)
Ethan Zuckerman wants to release a tool that would allow Facebook users to control what appears in their newsfeeds. His privacy-friendly browser extension, Unfollow Everything 2.0, is designed to essentially give users a switch to turn the newsfeed on and off whenever they want, providing a way to eliminate or curate the feed.
Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, is suing Meta to release a tool allowing users to "unfollow everything" on Facebook.
The tool is nearly ready to be released, Zuckerman told Ars, but the University of Massachusetts Amherst associate professor is afraid that Facebook owner Meta might threaten legal action if he goes ahead. And his fears appear well-founded. In 2021, Meta sent a cease-and-desist letter to the creator of the original Unfollow Everything, Louis Barclay, leading that developer to shut down his tool after thousands of Facebook users had eagerly downloaded it.
Zuckerman is suing Meta, asking a US district court in California to invalidate Meta's past arguments against developers like Barclay and rule that Meta would have no grounds to sue if he released his tool.
Logic Pro gets some serious AI—and a version bump—for Mac and iPad
Enlarge / The new Chord Track feature. (credit: Apple)
If you watched yesterday's iPad-a-palooza event from Apple, then you probably saw the segment about cool new features coming to the iPad version of Logic Pro, Apple's professional audio recording software. But what the event did not make clear was that all the same features are coming to the Mac version of Logic Pro—and both the Mac and iPad versions will get newly numbered. After many years, the Mac version of Logic Pro will upgrade from X (ten) to 11, while the much more recent iPad version increments to 2.
Both versions will be released on May 13, and both are free upgrades for existing users. (Sort of—iPad users have to pay a subscription fee to access Logic Pro, but if you already pay, you'll get the upgrade. This led many people to speculate online that Apple would move the Mac version of Logic to a similar subscription model; thankfully, that is not the case. Yet.)
Both versions will gain an identical set of new features, which were touched on briefly in Apple's event video. But thanks to a lengthy press release that Apple posted after the event, along with updates to Apple's main Logic page, we now have a better sense of what these features are, what systems they require, and just how much Apple has gone all-in on AI. Also, we get some pictures.
Critical vulnerabilities in BIG-IP appliances leave big networks open to intrusion
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Researchers on Wednesday reported critical vulnerabilities in a widely used networking appliance that leaves some of the world’s biggest networks open to intrusion.
The vulnerabilities reside in BIG-IP Next Central Manager, a component in the latest generation of the BIG-IP line of appliances, which organizations use to manage traffic going into and out of their networks. Seattle-based F5, which sells the product, says its gear is used in 48 of the top 50 corporations as tracked by Fortune. F5 describes the Next Central Manager as a “single, centralized point of control” for managing entire fleets of BIG-IP appliances.
As devices performing load balancing, DDoS mitigation, and inspection and encryption of data entering and exiting large networks, BIG-IP gear sits at their perimeter and acts as a major pipeline to some of the most security-critical resources housed inside. Those characteristics have made BIG-IP appliances ideal for hacking. In 2021 and 2022, hackers actively compromised BIG-IP appliances by exploiting vulnerabilities carrying severity ratings of 9.8 out of 10.
Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking
After reversing its positioning on remote work, Dell is reportedly implementing new tracking techniques on May 13 to ensure its workers are following the company's return-to-office (RTO) policy, The Register reported today, citing anonymous sources.
Dell has allowed people to work remotely for over 10 years. But in February, it issued an RTO mandate, and come May 13, most workers will be classified as either totally remote or hybrid. Starting this month, hybrid workers have to go into a Dell office at least 39 days per quarter. Fully remote workers, meanwhile, are ineligible for promotion, Business Insider reported in March.
Now The Register reports that Dell will track employees' badge swipes and VPN connections to confirm that workers are in the office for a significant amount of time.
40 years later, Kontrabant 2 for ZX Spectrum is rebroadcast on FM in Slovenia
Enlarge / In 1984, the year 2000 was so promising, students made entire games promising to take you there. (credit: Radio Student)
Software is almost impossibly easy to download, distribute, and access compared to 40 years ago. Everything is bigger, faster, and more flexible, but there's a certain charm to the ways of diskettes and cassettes that is hard to recapture. That doesn't mean we can't try.
By the time you read this, it's likely that Kontrabant 2 will have already hit the airwaves on Radio Študent in Slovenia. At 9:30 pm Slovenia time (UTC+2 in Daylight Savings Time), if you are tuned to 89.3 FM, hitting record on a cassette tape will capture a buzzing sound that will run until just over 50KB have been transmitted. If all went well, you can load the tape into your working ZX Spectrum or bring it to the Computer History Museum in Slovenia and use theirs to try it out.
Robot dogs armed with AI-targeting rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation
Enlarge / A still image of a robotic quadruped armed with a remote weapons system, captured from a video provided by Onyx Industries. (credit: Onyx Industries)
The United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) is currently evaluating a new generation of robotic "dogs" developed by Ghost Robotics, with the potential to be equipped with gun systems from defense tech company Onyx Industries, reports The War Zone.
While MARSOC is testing Ghost Robotics' quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles (called "Q-UGVs" for short) for various applications, including reconnaissance and surveillance, it's the possibility of arming them with weapons for remote engagement that may draw the most attention. But it's not unprecedented: The US Marine Corps has also tested robotic dogs armed with rocket launchers in the past.
MARSOC is currently in possession of two armed Q-UGVs undergoing testing, as confirmed by Onyx Industries staff, and their gun systems are based on Onyx's SENTRY remote weapon system (RWS), which features an AI-enabled digital imaging system and can automatically detect and track people, drones, or vehicles, reporting potential targets to a remote human operator that could be located anywhere in the world. The system maintains a human-in-the-loop control for fire decisions, and it cannot decide to fire autonomously.
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