Ars Technica
The right bacteria turn farms into carbon sinks
Some of the microbes that make carbon sequestration work. (credit: Andes Ag, Inc)
In 2022, humans emitted a staggering 36 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Along with reducing emissions, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a key climate mitigation strategy. But Gonzalo Fuenzalida wasn’t looking to help solve climate change when he co-founded the US company Andes.
“We started this company with the idea of using microbes to make the process of growing food more resilient,” says Fuenzalida. “We stumbled upon these microbes that have the ability to create minerals in the soil which contain carbon, and that intrigued us.”
Fuenzalida, alongside his co-founder Tania Timmermann-Aranis, had an unconventional notion: They could harness the power of microbes residing in plant roots within the soil to remove carbon from the atmosphere. These naturally occurring microbes can be applied to the soil by blending them with pesticides or other soil treatments—they will strategically position themselves within the root structure of corn, wheat, and soy plants.
Biogen dumps dubious Alzheimer’s drug after profit-killing FDA scandal
Enlarge / The exterior of the headquarters of biotechnology company Biogen in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)
Biotechnology company Biogen is abandoning Aduhelm, its questionable Alzheimer's drug that has floundered on the market since its scandal-plagued regulatory approval in 2021 and brow-raising pricing.
On Wednesday, the company announced it had terminated its license for Aduhelm (aducanumab) and will stop all development and commercialization activities. The rights to Aduhelm will revert back to Neurimmune, the Swiss biopharmaceutical company that discovered it.
Biogen will also end the Phase 4 clinical trial, ENVISION, that was required by the Food and Drug Administration to prove Biogen's claims that Aduhelm is effective at slowing progression of Alzheimer's in its early stages—something two Phase 3 trials failed to do with certainty.
Should you flush with toilet lid up or down? Study says it doesn’t matter
Enlarge / Whether the toilet lid is up or down doesn't make much difference in the spread of airborne bacterial and viral particles. (credit: Peter Dazeley)
File this one under "Studies We Wish Had Let Us Remain Ignorant." Scientists at the University of Arizona decided to investigate whether closing the toilet lid before flushing reduces cross-contamination of bathroom surfaces by airborne bacterial and viral particles via "toilet plumes." The bad news is that putting a lid on it doesn't result in any substantial reduction in contamination, according to their recent paper published in the American Journal of Infection Control. The good news: Adding a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and using disinfectant dispensers in the tank significantly reduce cross-contamination.
Regarding toilet plumes, we're not just talking about large water droplets that splatter when a toilet is flushed. Even smaller droplets can form and be spread into the surrounding air, potentially carrying bacteria like E. coli or a virus (e.g., norovirus) if an infected person has previously used said toilet. Pathogens can linger in the bowl even after repeated flushes, just waiting for their chance to launch into the air and spread disease. That's because larger droplets, in particular, can settle on surfaces before they dry, while smaller ones travel farther on natural air currents.
The first experiments examining whether toilet plumes contained contaminated particles were done in the 1950s, and the notion that disease could be spread this way was popularized in a 1975 study. In 2022, physicists and engineers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, managed to visualize toilet plumes of tiny airborne particles ejected from toilets during a flush using a combination of green lasers and cameras. It made for some pretty vivid video footage:
Chinese malware removed from SOHO routers after FBI issues covert commands
Enlarge / A Wi-Fi router. (credit: Getty Images | deepblue4you)
The US Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI surreptitiously sent commands to hundreds of infected small office and home office routers to remove malware China state-sponsored hackers were using to wage attacks on critical infrastructure.
The routers—mainly Cisco and Netgear devices that had reached their end of life—were infected with what’s known as KV Botnet malware, Justice Department officials said. Chinese hackers from a group tracked as Volt Typhoon used the malware to wrangle the routers into a network they could control. Traffic passing between the hackers and the compromised devices was encrypted using a VPN module KV Botnet installed. From there, the campaign operators connected to the networks of US critical infrastructure organizations to establish posts that could be used in future cyberattacks. The arrangement caused traffic to appear as originating from US IP addresses with trustworthy reputations rather than suspicious regions in China.
Seizing infected devicesBefore the takedown could be conducted legally, FBI agents had to receive authority—technically for what’s called a seizure of infected routers or "target devices"—from a federal judge. An initial affidavit seeking authority was filed in US federal court in Houston in December. Subsequent requests have been filed since then.
Apple declares last MacBook Pro with an optical drive obsolete
Enlarge / The 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2012.
Sometimes, it's worth taking a moment to note the end of an era, even when that ending might have happened a long time ago. Today, Apple announced that it considers the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro obsolete. It was the last MacBook Pro to include an optical drive for playing CDs or DVDs.
This means that any MacBook Pro with an optical drive is no longer supported.
Regarding products deemed obsolete, Apple's support page on the topic says:
ChatGPT’s new @-mentions bring multiple personalities into your AI convo
Enlarge / With so many choices, selecting the perfect GPT can be confusing. (credit: Getty Images)
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced a new feature in ChatGPT that allows users to pull custom personalities called "GPTs" into any ChatGPT conversation with the @ symbol. It allows a level of quasi-teamwork within ChatGPT among expert roles that was previously impractical, making collaborating with a team of AI agents within OpenAI's platform one step closer to reality.
"You can now bring GPTs into any conversation in ChatGPT - simply type @ and select the GPT," wrote OpenAI on the social media network X. "This allows you to add relevant GPTs with the full context of the conversation."
OpenAI introduced GPTs in November as a way to create custom personalities or roles for ChatGPT to play. For example, users can build their own GPTs to focus on certain topics or certain skills. Paid ChatGPT subscribers can also freely download a host of GPTs developed by other ChatGPT users through the GPT Store.
ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of its users, Ars reader says
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
ChatGPT is leaking private conversations that include login credentials and other personal details of unrelated users, screenshots submitted by an Ars reader on Monday indicated.
Two of the seven screenshots the reader submitted stood out in particular. Both contained multiple pairs of usernames and passwords that appeared to be connected to a support system used by employees of a pharmacy prescription drug portal. An employee using the AI chatbot seemed to be troubleshooting problems that encountered while using the portal.
“Horrible, horrible, horrible”“THIS is so f-ing insane, horrible, horrible, horrible, i cannot believe how poorly this was built in the first place, and the obstruction that is being put in front of me that prevents it from getting better,” the user wrote. “I would fire [redacted name of software] just for this absurdity if it was my choice. This is wrong.”
OpenAI and Common Sense Media partner to protect teens from AI harms and misuse
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
On Monday, OpenAI announced a partnership with the nonprofit Common Sense Media to create AI guidelines and educational materials targeted at parents, educators, and teens. It includes the curation of family-friendly GPTs in OpenAI's GPT store. The collaboration aims to address concerns about the impacts of AI on children and teenagers.
Known for its reviews of films and TV shows aimed at parents seeking appropriate media for their kids to watch, Common Sense Media recently branched out into AI and has been reviewing AI assistants on its site.
"AI isn’t going anywhere, so it’s important that we help kids understand how to use it responsibly," Common Sense Media wrote on X. "That’s why we’ve partnered with @OpenAI to help teens and families safely harness the potential of AI."
Beware of scammers sending live couriers to liquidate victims’ life savings
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Scammers are stepping up their game by sending couriers to the homes of elderly people and others as part of a ruse intended to rob them of their life savings, the FBI said in an advisory Monday.
“The FBI is warning the public about scammers instructing victims, many of whom are senior citizens, to liquidate their assets into cash and/or buy gold, silver, or other precious metals to protect their funds,” FBI officials with the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center said. “Criminals then arrange for couriers to meet the victims in person to pick up the cash or precious metals.”
The scammers pose as tech or customer support agents or government officials and sometimes use a multi-layered approach as they falsely claim they work on behalf of technology companies, financial institutions, or the US government. The scammers tell the targets they have been hacked or are at risk of being hacked and that their assets should be protected. The scammers then instruct the targets to liquidate assets into cash. In some cases, the scammers instruct targets to wire funds to a fake metal dealer who will ship purchased merchandise to the victims’ homes.
Apple warns proposed UK law will affect software updates around the world
Apple is "deeply concerned" that proposed changes to a United Kingdom law could give the UK government unprecedented power to "secretly veto" privacy and security updates to its products and services, the tech giant said in a statement provided to Ars.
If passed, potentially this spring, the amendments to the UK's Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) could deprive not just UK users, but all users globally of important new privacy and security features, Apple warned.
"Protecting our users’ privacy and the security of their data is at the very heart of everything we do at Apple," Apple said. "We’re deeply concerned the proposed amendments" to the IPA "now before Parliament place users' privacy and security at risk."
After 32 years, one of the ’Net’s oldest software archives is shutting down
Enlarge / Box art for IBM OS/2 Warp version 3, an OS released in 1995 that competed with Windows. (credit: IBM)
In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which once competed fiercely with Microsoft Windows.
In a statement made to The Register, a representative of NMSU wrote, "We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service."
Hobbes is hosted by the Department of Information & Communication Technologies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In the official announcement, the site reads, "After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist."
Ryzen 8000G review: An integrated GPU that can beat a graphics card, for a price
Enlarge / The most interesting thing about AMD's Ryzen 7 8700G CPU is the Radeon 780M GPU that's attached to it. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Put me on the short list of people who can get excited about the humble, much-derided integrated GPU.
Yes, most of them are afterthoughts, designed for office desktops and laptops that will spend most of their lives rendering 2D images to a single monitor. But when integrated graphics push forward, it can open up possibilities for people who want to play games but can only afford a cheap desktop (or who have to make do with whatever their parents will pay for, which was the big limiter on my PC gaming experience as a kid).
That, plus an unrelated but accordant interest in building small mini-ITX-based desktops, has kept me interested in AMD’s G-series Ryzen desktop chips (which it sometimes calls “APUs,” to distinguish them from the Ryzen CPUs). And the Ryzen 8000G chips are a big upgrade from the 5000G series that immediately preceded them (this makes sense, because as we all know the number 8 immediately follows the number 5).
Blockbuster weight-loss drugs slashed from NC state plan over ballooning costs
Enlarge / Wegovy is an injectable prescription weight loss medicine that has helped people with obesity. (credit: Getty | Michael Siluk)
The health plan for North Carolina state employees will stop covering blockbuster GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, including Wegovy and Zepbound, because—according to the plan's board of trustees—the drugs are simply too expensive.
Last week, the board voted 4-3 to end all coverage of GLP-1 medications for weight loss on April 1. If the coverage is dropped, it is believed to be the first major state health plan to end coverage of the popular but pricey weight-loss drugs. The plan will continue to pay for GLP-1 medications prescribed to treat diabetes, including Ozempic.
The North Carolina State Health Plan covers nearly 740,000 people, including teachers, state employees, retirees, and their family members. In 2023, monthly premiums from the plan ranged from $25 for base coverage for an individual to up to $720 for premium family coverage. Members prescribed Wegovy paid a co-pay of between $30 and $50 per month for the drug, while the plan's cost was around $800 a month.
Report: Deus Ex title killed after Embracer Group’s cuts at Eidos
Enlarge / Adam Jensen of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, taking in the news that no last-minute contrivance is going to save his series from what seemed like inevitable doom. (Pun credit to Andrew Cunningham). (credit: Eidos Interactive)
Embracer Group, the Swedish firm that bought up a number of known talents and gaming properties during the pandemic years, has canceled a Deus Ex game at its Eidos studio in Montreal, Canada, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.
The game, while not officially announced, has been known about since May 2022. It was due to enter production later in 2024 and had seen two years of pre-production development, according to Schreier's sources. Many employees will be laid off as part of the cancellation.
Embracer Group acquired Eidos Montreal, along with Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix Montreal, for $300 million in mid-2022, buying up all of Japanese game publisher Square Enix's Western game studios. That gave Embracer the keys to several influential and popular series, including Tomb Raider, Just Cause, Life Is Strange, and Deus Ex.
Wear OS’s most consistent OEM quits: Fossil stops making smartwatches
Enlarge / The Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch. (credit: Fossil)
Fossil was the only brand keeping Google's Wear OS alive for years, but now the fashion brand is quitting the smartwatch market. Just before the weekend, the company confirmed to The Verge: "We have made the strategic decision to exit the smartwatch business." The company says existing smartwatches will continue to get software updates "for the next few years" while it refocuses on traditional watches and jewelry.
Wear OS is out of the dark ages now, but for years Fossil was the OS's only lifeline. Back in the days when Qualcomm was strangling the OS with lackluster SoC updates, Fossil was the only company that kept the dream alive. Fossil jumped into the Android Wear/Wear OS market in 2015 and has been the only steady source of Android smartwatch hardware since then. All the big companies like Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei, Motorola, and Asus made watches for only a year or two and quit.
In 2021, despite years of loyalty, Google dropped Fossil like a rock when Samsung offered to come back to the Wear OS ecosystem. Google lured Samsung away from its in-house Tizen OS with preferential treatment, including exclusive rights to the new "Wear OS 3" release and exclusive apps. That year, 2021, featured head-to-head August Wear OS releases of Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 and Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch. Samsung's watch had a faster, Samsung-made SoC, ran Wear OS 3, and cost $250, while Fossil was stuck with Wear OS 2, a slower Qualcomm chip, and a $300 price tag. Fossil would barely be able to compete with Samsung if the playing field were level; but add to that Samsung's exclusive chips and Google's preferential treatment, and Fossil's watches never stood a chance. The Gen 6 will be the company's last smartwatch release.
Masters of the Air: Imagine a bunch of people throwing up, including me
Enlarge / Our two main heroes so far, Buck and Bucky. Or possibly Bucky and Buck. I forget which is which. (credit: Apple)
I'm writing this article under duress because it's not going to create anything new or try to make the world a better place—instead, I'm going to do the thing where a critic tears down the work of others rather than offering up their own creation to balance the scales. So here we go: I didn't like the first two episodes of Masters of the Air, and I don't think I'll be back for episode three.
The feeling that the show might not turn out to be what I was hoping for has been growing in my dark heart since catching the first trailer a month or so ago—it looked both distressingly digital and also maunderingly maudlin, with Austin Butler's color-graded babyface peering out through a hazy, desaturated cloud of cigarette smoke and 1940s World War II pilot tropes. Unfortunately, the show at release made me feel exactly how I feared it might—rather than recapturing the magic of Band of Brothers or the horror of The Pacific, Masters so far has the depth and maturity of a Call of Duty cutscene.
Does this man look old enough to be allowed to fly that plane? (credit: Apple)
World War BlechAfter two episodes, I feel I've seen everything Masters has to offer: a dead-serious window into the world of B-17 Flying Fortress pilots, wholly lacking any irony or sense of self-awareness. There's no winking and nodding to the audience, no joking around, no historic interviews with salt-and-pepper veterans to humanize the cast. The only thing allowed here is wall-to-wall jingoistic patriotism—the kind where there's no room for anything except God, the United States of America, and bombing the crap out of the enemy. And pining wistfully for that special girl waiting at home.
Amazon’s $1.4B Roomba bid fails, leading to iRobot layoffs and CEO resignation
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Amazon will no longer pursue a $1.4 billion acquisition of iRobot, maker of Roomba robot vacuums after the companies announced today that they have "no path to regulatory approval in the European Union."
On the same day, iRobot announced an "operational restructuring plan" in which 350 employees, or 31 percent of iRobot's workforce, will be laid off. CEO Colin Angle, one of the company's cofounders, will also step down, and the company has hired a chief restructuring officer for its "return to profitability." The company will refocus on its core cleaning product lineup, pausing efforts in air purification, robotic lawn mowing, and education.
As part of the deal's terms, Amazon will pay $94 million to iRobot, most of it earmarked for paying back a three-year, $200 million loan the company took out when the Amazon acquisition was announced in August 2022. iRobot stated in its release that it expected to report losses of "between $265 and $285 million" in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Drastic moves by X, Microsoft may not stop spread of fake Taylor Swift porn
Enlarge (credit: Gilbert Flores/Golden Globes 2024 / Contributor | Getty Images North America)
After explicit, fake AI images of Taylor Swift began spreading on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter has attempted to block all searches for the pop star.
"This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue," Joe Benarroch, X's head of business operations, said in a statement to Reuters.
However, even this drastic step does not seem to be an effective solution, as "Swift" was trending Monday morning on X. The temporary block also does nothing to stop searches using misspellings of the singer's name.
Our fave bureaucratic villain is back in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire trailer
There's plenty of old familiar faces in the latest trailer for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
Every good comedy needs a villain audiences love to hate, and the original 1984 Ghostbusters gave us William Atherton's sneering, nosy-parker EPA inspector, Walter Peck. That film turns 40 this year, so it's fitting that Sony is releasing Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, its latest sequel, in March, a follow-up to 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife. We're getting even more of Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson this time around, along with the welcome return of Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) as well as Peck.
(Some spoilers for Ghostbusters: Afterlife below.)
As we previously reported, Afterlife introduced us to a new generation of ghostbusters descended from Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis)—namely, the science-loving Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and her mechanically inclined brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard). Mom Callie (Carrie Coon), aka Egon's daughter, moved the family out to Oklahoma when she inherited Egon's old house. The kids discovered their grandfather's old ghost-busting gear just in time to battle the attempted return of none other than Gozer the Gozerian from the original film. Afterlife grossed over $200 million at the box office against its $75 million production budget. Sony announced the sequel the following spring, with a script by Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan. Kenan would eventually replace Reitman as director. Per the official premise:
Canon plans to disrupt chipmaking with low-cost “stamp” machine
Enlarge / Canon’s FPA-1200NZ2C nanoimprint lithography machine. The company has been developing technology to stamp chip designs onto silicon wafers rather than etching them using light. (credit: Canon)
Canon hopes to start shipments of new low-cost chip-making machines as early as this year, as the Japanese company best known for its cameras and printers tries to undercut longtime industry leader ASML in providing the tools to make leading-edge semiconductors.
The challenge from Canon comes as Western governments attempt to restrict China’s access to the most advanced semiconductor technologies and as global demand for chipmaking machines has soared. If successful, Canon’s “nanoimprint” technology could give back Japanese manufacturers some of the edge they ceded to rivals in South Korea, Taiwan and, increasingly, China over the past three decades.
“We would like to start shipping this year or next year... we want to do it while the market is hot,” said Hiroaki Takeishi, head of Canon’s industrial group, who has overseen the development of the new lithography machines. “It is a very unique technology that will enable cutting-edge chips to be made simply and at a low cost.”