ArsTechnica
Teen coder shuts down open source Mac app Whisky, citing harm to paid apps
Whisky, a gaming-focused front-end for Wine's Windows compatibility tools on macOS, is no longer receiving updates. As one of the most useful and well-regarded tools in a Mac gamer's toolkit, it could be seen as a great loss, but its developer hopes you'll move on with what he considers a better option: supporting CodeWeavers' CrossOver product.
Also, Whisky's creator is an 18-year-old college student, and he could use a break.
"I am 18, yes, and attending Northeastern University, so it's always a balancing act between my school work and dev work," Isaac Marovitz wrote to Ars. The Whisky project has "been more or less in this state for a few months, I posted the notice mostly to clarify and formally announce it," Marovitz said, having received "a lot of questions" about the project status.
Trump can’t keep China from getting AI chips, TSMC suggests
As the global artificial intelligence (AI) race presses on amid a US-China trade war, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—a $514 billion titan that manufactures most of the world's AI chips—is warning that it may not be possible to keep its customers' most advanced technology out of China's hands.
US export controls require chipmakers to monitor shipments and know their customers to restrict China's access to AI chips. But in a recently published 2024 report, TSMC confirmed that its "role in the semiconductor supply chain inherently limits its visibility and information available to it regarding the downstream use or user of final products that incorporate semiconductors manufactured by it."
Essentially, TSMC expects that it plays too big a role in the semiconductor industry to stop all the possible unintended end-uses of the semiconductors it manufactures. Similarly, it appears impossible to track all the third parties determined to skirt sanctions. And if TSMC's hands are truly tied, that ultimately means that the US can't effectively stop the latest AI tech from trickling into China.
In depth with Windows 11 Recall—and what Microsoft has (and hasn’t) fixed
Microsoft is preparing to reintroduce Recall to Windows 11. A feature limited to Copilot+ PCs—a label that just a fraction of a fraction of Windows 11 systems even qualify for—Recall has been controversial in part because it builds an extensive database of text and screenshots that records almost everything you do on your PC.
But the main problem with the initial version of Recall—the one that was delayed at the last minute after a large-scale outcry from security researchers, reporters, and users—was not just that it recorded everything you did on your PC but that it was a rushed, enabled-by-default feature with gaping security holes that made it trivial for anyone with any kind of access to your PC to see your entire Recall database.
It made no efforts to automatically exclude sensitive data like bank information or credit card numbers, offering just a few mechanisms to users to manually exclude specific apps or websites. It had been built quickly, outside of the normal extensive Windows Insider preview and testing process. And all of this was happening at the same time that the company was pledging to prioritize security over all other considerations, following several serious and highly public breaches.
Chrome on the chopping block as Google’s search antitrust trial moves forward
The remedy phase of Google's search antitrust trial is getting underway, and the government is seeking to force major changes. The next few weeks could reshape Google as a company and significantly alter the balance of power on the Internet, and both sides have a plan to get their way.
With opening arguments beginning today, the US Justice Department will seek to convince the court that Google should be forced to divest Chrome, unbundle Android, and make other foundational changes. But Google will attempt to paint the government's position as too extreme and rooted in past grievances. No matter what happens at this trial, Google hasn't given up hope it can turn back time.
Advantage for Justice Dept.The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a major advantage here: Google is guilty. It lost the liability phase of this trial resoundingly, with the court finding Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power." As far as the court is concerned, Google has an illegal monopoly in search services and general search advertising. The purpose of this trial is to determine what to do about it, and the DOJ has some ideas.
Annoyed ChatGPT users complain about bot’s relentlessly positive tone
Ask ChatGPT anything lately—how to poach an egg, whether you should hug a cactus—and you may be greeted with a burst of purple praise: “Good question! You’re very astute to ask that.” To some extent, ChatGPT has been a sycophant for years, but since late March, a growing cohort of Redditors, X users, and Ars readers say that GPT-4o's relentless pep has crossed the line from friendly to unbearable.
"ChatGPT is suddenly the biggest suckup I've ever met," wrote software engineer Craig Weiss in a widely shared tweet on Friday. "It literally will validate everything I say."
"EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING," replied a Reddit user who references Weiss' tweet, sparking yet another thread about ChatGPT being a sycophant. Recently, other Reddit users have described feeling "buttered up" and unable to take the "phony act" anymore, while some complain that ChatGPT "wants to pretend all questions are exciting and it's freaking annoying."
HBO’s The Last of Us reaches “The Moment” game fans have been dreading
New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars' Kyle Orland (who's played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn't) will be talking about them here every Monday morning. While these recaps don't delve into every single plot point of the episode, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh.
Kyle: I'd like to personally welcome Andrew and everyone else who didn't play The Last of Us Part 2 to the summer of 2020, when the gaming world was rocked by the most shocking video game character permadeath this side of Final Fantasy VII.
Before we get into how they changed Joel's pivotal death scene for the TV show, and why I think it doesn't work quite as well here, I'd love to hear more about what was going through your head both as it was happening and after.
Andrew: This should, if nothing else, reinforce my bona fides as someone who has not the faintest idea what is coming.
My main reaction is "Boy, Kyle just let me say a whole bunch of things last week even though clearly he knew this was what was going to happen!" I thought we were watching the opening to a second season of a TV show in the first episode, the establishment of a new status quo that we would then explore over the course of the next few episodes. But we were, instead, playing the tutorial level of a second video game, right before everything blows up.
I was pretty astonished by what the show did to Joel. Not just because I didn't see it coming! But because it leaves the show without one of the two nuanced and well-developed characters we spent all of last season building up. I don't, uh, love it, as a storytelling decision.
Probably the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Credit: HBOKyle: I will say it was hard not even alluding to what was coming last week, but it was also kind of fun just letting you have your last "Sweet Summer Child" moments in the sun. I also felt that Joel's sudden absence hurt the remainder of the game, though based on the storytelling beats we've seen and/or missed so far, I wouldn't be shocked if we have some flashbacks...
Back in 2020, I actually had the shocking moment spoiled by some pretty major leaks that I ended up covering as a journalist weeks before I was able to review the game myself.
Aside from that, though, the show kind of dampens the impact of "The Moment" by making Abby's motivations crystal clear for 1.5 episodes leading up to it. In the game, you actually play as a mostly blank-slate Abby for a few brief scenes before being rescued by Joel. After that, the shocking turnaround plays out as a quick gut punch during a cutscene that has a lot less Abby-monologuing than the show did.
The game doesn't fill in the details about the "why" of it all for the audience until much later, which makes the whole thing that much more impactful. But maybe the showrunners figured that since the game already exists, it would be hard to keep the audience off balance like that for weeks when they could just look up what was going on...
Andrew: The monologuing was off-putting, honestly, and gets to the heart of what I'm concerned about. I'll refrain from speculating a ton about a game whose plot it would take me about 30 seconds to look up and read, but I'm not particularly excited to watch Ellie chase down this generically angst-ridden fresh-faced former Firefly? Does the show now need to be carried by a bunch of the Jackson Hole characters we just met? None of these possibilities are as interesting to me as watching Joel and an adult Ellie deal with their issues. Ellie will probably be just fine after all this, right? Credit: HBOKyle: Yeah, I don't think it's spoiling much to say that Joel and Ellie's relationship carried the first game, and now it's obvious that Ellie's hunt for revenge is going to attempt to carry the second. It's a rough shift that I don't think did the second game any favors, personally.
The game goes to a lot of trouble to literally put you in Abby's shoes and eventually tries to try to make her own revenge saga feel a little more earned. Here, I feel like the show is being a bit more blunt about selling you her backstory at the front end and attempting to "justify" her brutal turn toward Joel somewhat in advance.
I wondered if you found yourself sympathizing at all with her character at this point.
Andrew: Obviously what Joel did to the Fireflies is awful, maybe unforgiveable. Beyond the lie to Ellie, there's a strong possibility that he deprived humanity of a cure for the disease causing the very-much-ongoing apocalypse.
But, like, no! I don't sympathize with Abby! Not only is she driven solely by this bland Inigo Montoya thing, but she sadistically tortures someone who just saved her stupid life, brutalizing Joel so much that it drives her also-supposedly-revenge-driven Firefly friends to tears. If I'm supposed to sympathize with her, the show did pretty much everything possible to make sure I don't.
On paper, what Joel did is probably way worse, but we've also been primed by a whole season of TV (and by the charm of Pedro Pascal) to try and understand why he did what he did. None of this is really happening with Abby.
Kyle: Yeah, "supposed to sympathize with her" is a bit too strong, perhaps, especially at this point in the narrative. But I do think the show is trying to make her actions at least feel partially justified or understandable? It will be interesting to see how the show handles turning her into a more fleshed out character, because at this point, her revenge quest feels a bit mustache-twirling to me.
Backing up a bit, this episode also featured a huge set-piece zombie horde battle that ruins the brief calm we enjoyed in Jackson Hole. The scene played out so much like a video game mission that I had to go back and make sure I hadn't forgotten about some major Jackson Hole firefight in the game. But no, this is a pure creation of the show.
I think the whole thing worked pretty well both as a reminder of the precarity of the vestiges of human civilization and an excuse for some flashy special effects. I also thought for a second that they were actually going to kill off Tommy so the show had its own totally unexpected death, even for people who had played the game. That couple of minutes with the flamethrower was actually tense for me!
Mmmmm... roasted mushrooms... Credit: HBOAndrew: Maybe Abby will become more fleshed-out, and maybe she won't. But she's started by making the exact same mistake as Joel: leaving witnesses.
I did enjoy the zombie battle a lot. The liquid churn of the snow as a million guys burst out from under it: creepy! Good on the show and HBO for figuring out a way to do a snowy zombie horde fight without making it feel too reminiscent of Game of Thrones.
I will, again, refrain from speculating overmuch about where the Jackson Hole storyline goes since I'm not even sure at this point how much time will be spent on the aftermath and rebuilding (if there is rebuilding rather than further societal collapse). I did find myself wondering during the flamethrower scene whether roasted mushroom guy smelled appetizing or whether people in this world can even bring themselves to enjoy mushrooms on a pizza or in an omelette.
Kyle: I bet eating a normal mushroom in The Last of Us universe is akin to eating a hallucinogenic mushroom in the real world. A little bit of a dangerous taboo for iconoclastic rulebreakers to show they're open-minded.Andrew: We've established that I have no idea what is going to happen next, but we do have dangling threads here to deal with next week. How do the residents of Jackson Hole deal with the fungus in their pipes? How many people try to talk Ellie out of her revenge tour before she goes off and does it anyway? How are the Smart Zombies we met last week going to come back and cause problems? How many more Abby flashbacks will I need to sit through?
But above all, I'm really curious to know what the show is going to do to keep game-players like yourself on your toes.
Kyle: Last season we got the surprising "Nick Offerman's life of love among the zombies" story as the third episode, and I wouldn't mind a similar out of nowhere left turn to wash out Joel's death this time around. I'm not saying that has to take the form of what would be a stunning, unexpected, and completely illogical return of Offerman's Bill character. But if that is what the show decides to do, I would not complain.F1 in Saudi Arabia: Blind corners and walls at over 200 mph
The Formula 1 race in Saudi Arabia last night was the fifth race in six weeks. The latest venue is a temporary street circuit of a breed with Las Vegas. It's a nighttime race set against a backdrop of bright-colored lights and sponsor-clad concrete walls lining the track. Except in Jeddah, many of the corners are blind, and most are very fast. As at Suzuka, qualifying was very important here, with just a few milliseconds making the difference.
Although it's far from the only autocratic petrostate on the F1 calendar, some people remain uncomfortable with F1 racing in Saudi Arabia, given that country's record of human rights abuses. I've not been, nor do I have any plans to attend a race there, but I had my eyes opened to a broader perspective by a couple of very thoughtful pieces written by motorsport journalist and sometime Ars contributor Hazel Southwell, who has attended several races in the kingdom, including as an independent journalist. Feel free to blast the sport in the comments, but do give Hazel's pieces a read.
Fireworks, drones, lasers, floodlights, LEDs... you'd think this was compensating for something. Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images Red Bull really doesn’t want next year’s engine rulesDespite a meeting last week that was meant to put the matter to bed, the ongoing saga of changes to next year's powertrain rules just won't go away. From 2026 until 2030, the new powertrains will use a V6 that provides 55 percent of the car's power and an electric hybrid motor that provides the other 45 percent. So that means an F1 car will only be able to make its full 1,000 hp (750 kW) if there's charge in the battery. If the pack is depleted or derates, the car will have just 536 hp (400 kW) from its V6 engine.
Neuroscientists are racing to turn brain waves into speech
Neuroscientists are striving to give a voice to people unable to speak in a fast-advancing quest to harness brainwaves to restore or enhance physical abilities.
Researchers at universities across California and companies, such as New York-based Precision Neuroscience, are among those making headway toward generating naturalistic speech through a combination of brain implants and artificial intelligence.
Investment and attention have long been focused on implants that enable severely disabled people to operate computer keyboards, control robotic arms, or regain some use of their own paralyzed limbs. But some labs are making strides by concentrating on technology that converts thought patterns into speech.
Ghost forests are growing as sea levels rise
Like giant bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clean of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting remains of what were once stands of cedar and pine. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back.
These arboreal graveyards are showing up in places where the land slopes gently into the ocean and where salty water increasingly encroaches. Along the United States’ East Coast, in pockets of the West Coast, and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, leaving behind woody skeletons typically surrounded by marsh.
What happens next? That depends. As these dead forests transition, some will become marshes that maintain vital ecosystem services, such as buffering against storms and storing carbon. Others may become home to invasive plants or support no plant life at all—and the ecosystem services will be lost. Researchers are working to understand how this growing shift toward marshes and ghost forests will, on balance, affect coastal ecosystems.
Lichens can survive almost anything, and some might survive Mars
Whether anything ever lived on Mars is unknown. And the present environment, with harsh temperatures, intense radiation, and a sparse atmosphere, isn’t exactly propitious for life. Despite the red planet’s brutality, lichens that inhabit some of the harshest environments on Earth could possibly survive there.
Lichens are symbionts, or two organisms that are in a cooperative relationship. There is a fungal component (most are about 90 percent fungus) and a photosynthetic component (algae or cyanobacteria). To see if some species of lichen had what it takes to survive on Mars, a team of researchers led by botanist Kaja Skubała used the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences to expose the lichen species Diploschistes muscorum and Cetrarea aculeata to simulate Mars conditions.
“Our study is the first to demonstrate that the metabolism of the fungal partner in lichen symbiosis was active while being in a Mars-like environment,” the researchers said in a study recently published in IMA Fungus. “X-rays associated with solar flares and SEPs reaching Mars should not affect the potential habitability of lichens on this planet.”
Google adds YouTube Music feature to end annoying volume shifts
Google's history with music services is almost as convoluted and frustrating as its history with messaging. However, things have gotten calmer (and slower) ever since Google ceded music to the YouTube division. The YouTube Music app has its share of annoyances, to be sure, but it's getting a long-overdue feature that users have been requesting for ages: consistent volume.
Listening to a single album from beginning to end is increasingly unusual in this age of unlimited access to music. As your playlist wheels from one genre or era to the next, the inevitable vibe shifts can be grating. Different tracks can have wildly different volumes, which can be shocking and potentially damaging to your ears if you've got your volume up for a ballad only to be hit with a heavy guitar riff after the break.
The gist of consistent volume is simple—it normalizes volume across tracks, making the volume roughly the same. Consistent volume builds on a feature from the YouTube app called "stable volume." When Google released stable volume for YouTube, it noted that the feature would continuously adjust volume throughout the video. Because of that, it was disabled for music content on the platform.
Trump official to Katy Perry and Bezos’ fiancée: “You cannot identify as an astronaut”
This week's flight of the New Shepard spacecraft, NS-31, and its all-female crew has stirred up a mess of coverage, from tabloids to high-brow journalism outlets. And why not? Six women, led by superstar Katy Perry, were flying into space!
By contrast, Ars Technica has been largely silent. Why? Because yet another suborbital flight on New Shepard matters little in the long arc of spaceflight history. Beyond that, I did not want to be too negative about someone else's happiness, especially since it was privately funded. Live and let live, and all of that.
However, if I'm being frank, this flight and its breathless promotion made me uncomfortable. Let me explain. Perhaps the most important change in spaceflight over the last two decades has been the rise of commercial spaceflight, which is bringing down the cost of access to space and marks an essential step to humanity becoming a spacefaring species. This rising tide has been spurred in large part by billionaires, particularly Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and, to a lesser extent, Richard Branson.
Microsoft’s “1‑bit” AI model runs on a CPU only, while matching larger systems
When it comes to actually storing the numerical weights that power a large language model's underlying neural network, most modern AI models rely on the precision of 16- or 32-bit floating point numbers. But that level of precision can come at the cost of large memory footprints (in the hundreds of gigabytes for the largest models) and significant processing resources needed for the complex matrix multiplication used when responding to prompts.
Now, researchers at Microsoft's General Artificial Intelligence group have released a new neural network model that works with just three distinct weight values: -1, 0, or 1. Building on top of previous work Microsoft Research published in 2023, the new model's "ternary" architecture reduces overall complexity and "substantial advantages in computational efficiency," the researchers write, allowing it to run effectively on a simple desktop CPU. And despite the massive reduction in weight precision, the researchers claim that the model "can achieve performance comparable to leading open-weight, full-precision models of similar size across a wide range of tasks."
Watching your weightsThe idea of simplifying model weights isn't a completely new one in AI research. For years, researchers have been experimenting with quantization techniques that squeeze their neural network weights into smaller memory envelopes. In recent years, the most extreme quantization efforts have focused on so-called "BitNets" that represent each weight in a single bit (representing +1 or -1).
Synology confirms that higher-end NAS products will require its branded drives
Popular NAS-maker Synology has confirmed and slightly clarified a policy that appeared on its German website earlier this week: Its "Plus" tier of devices, starting with the 2025 series, will require Synology-branded hard drives for full compatibility, at least at first.
"Synology-branded drives will be needed for use in the newly announced Plus series, with plans to update the Product Compatibility List as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems," a Synology representative told Ars by email. "Extensive internal testing has shown that drives that follow a rigorous validation process when paired with Synology systems are at less risk of drive failure and ongoing compatibility issues."
Without a Synology-branded or approved drive in a device that requires it, NAS devices could fail to create storage pools and lose volume-wide deduplication and lifespan analysis, Synology's German press release stated. Similar drive restrictions are already in place for XS Plus and rack-mounted Synology models, though work-arounds exist.
To regenerate a head, you first have to know where your tail is
For those of us whose memory of high school biology hasn't faded entirely, planarians will probably sound very familiar. They're generally used as an example of one of the extreme ends of regenerative capacity. While some animals like mammals have a limited ability to regenerate lost tissues, planarians can be cut roughly in half and regenerate either an entire head or entire tail, depending on which part of the body you choose to keep track of.
In doing so, they have to re-establish something that is typically only needed early in an animal's development: a signaling system that helps tell cells where the animal's head and tail are. Now, a US-based team asked a question that I'd never have thought of: What happens if you cut the animal in half early in development, while the developmental head-to-tail signaling system is still active? The answer turned out to be surprisingly complex.
Heads or tails?Planarians are small flatworms that would probably be living quiet lives somewhere if biologists hadn't discovered their ability to regenerate lots of adult tissues when damaged. The process has been well-studied by this point and involves the formation of a cluster of stem cells, called a blastema, at the site of damage. From there, many of the signals that control the formation of specialized tissues in the embryo get re-activated, directing the stem cells down the developmental pathways needed to reproduce any lost organs.
Regrets: Actors who sold AI avatars stuck in Black Mirror-esque dystopia
In a Black Mirror-esque turn, some cash-strapped actors who didn't fully understand the consequences are regretting selling their likenesses to be used in AI videos that they consider embarrassing, damaging, or harmful, AFP reported.
Among them is a 29-year-old New York-based actor, Adam Coy, who licensed rights to his face and voice to a company called MCM for one year for $1,000 without thinking, "am I crossing a line by doing this?" His partner's mother later found videos where he appeared as a doomsayer predicting disasters, he told the AFP.
South Korean actor Simon Lee's AI likeness was similarly used to spook naïve Internet users but in a potentially more harmful way. He told the AFP that he was "stunned" to find his AI avatar promoting "questionable health cures on TikTok and Instagram," feeling ashamed to have his face linked to obvious scams.
“Lab leak” marketing page replaces federal hub for COVID resources
After obliterating the federal office on long COVID and clawing back billions in COVID funding from state health departments, the Trump administration has now entirely erased the online hub for federal COVID-19 resources. In its place now stands a site promoting the unproven idea that the pandemic virus SARS-CoV-2 was generated in and leaked from a lab in China, sparking the global health crisis.
Navigating to COVID.gov brings up a slick site with rich content that lays out arguments and allegations supporting a lab-based origin of the pandemic and subsequent cover-up by US health officials and Democrats.
Previously, the site provided unembellished quick references to COVID-19 resources, including links to information on vaccines, testing, treatments, and long COVID. It also provided a link to resources for addressing COVID-19 vaccine misconceptions and confronting misinformation. That all appears to be gone now, though some of the same information still remains on a separate COVID-19 page hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HP agrees to $4M settlement over claims of “falsely advertising” PCs, keyboards
HP Inc. has agreed to pay a $4 million settlement to customers after being accused of “false advertising” of computers and peripherals on its website.
Earlier this month, Judge P. Casey Pitts for the US District Court of the San Jose Division of the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval [PDF] of a settlement agreement regarding a class-action complaint first filed against HP on October 13, 2021. The complaint accused HP's website of showing "misleading" original pricing for various computers, mice, and keyboards that was higher than how the products were recently and typically priced.
Per the settlement agreement [PDF], HP will contribute $4 million to a "non-reversionary common fund, which shall be used to pay the (i) Settlement Class members’ claims; (ii) court-approved Notice and Settlement Administration Costs; (iii) court-approved Settlement Class Representatives’ Service Award; and (iv) court-approved Settlement Class Counsel Attorneys’ Fees and Costs Award. All residual funds will be distributed pro rata to Settlement Class members who submitted valid claims and cashed checks.”
Trump’s FCC chair threatens Comcast, demands changes to NBC news coverage
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr accused Comcast of "news distortion" because its subsidiary NBC isn't parroting the Trump administration narrative on the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
"Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn't cut it," Carr wrote in a post on X yesterday.
Carr's use of the phrase "news distortion" is significant because he has been invoking the FCC's rarely enforced news distortion policy to pressure licensed broadcasters that he perceives as being biased against President Trump. For a detailed look at Carr's fight against media, read our feature: "The speech police: Chairman Brendan Carr and the FCC's news distortion policy."
US Interior secretary orders offshore wind project shut down
On Thursday, Norwegian company Equinor announced that it was suspending the construction of a planned 800 MW-capacity offshore wind farm currently being built in the waters off New York. The reason? An order from US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who alleged that the project was rushed through review.
The move comes as the US's nascent offshore wind industry is facing uncertainty, with all future leases placed on hold by an executive order issued on the day of Trump's inauguration. The hold was ostensibly put in place to allow time to review the permitting process. But Burgum's move comes the same week a report from the Government Accountability Office, done in response to the executive order, found only minor issues with the existing permitting process.
On holdThe Equnior project, termed Empire Wind, is a key part of New York's plans to meet its climate goals. Combined with a second phase that's currently in planning, Empire Wind would have a rated capacity of two gigawatts, or over 20 percent of the state's planned offshore wind capacity. The initial construction, combined with the development of shore facilities, already has an estimated value of $2.5 billion, Equinor estimates, and is currently employing roughly 1,500 people. Construction was expected to be complete in 2027, although energy production from a subset of the 54 planned 15 MW turbines could have begun before then.