Ars Technica
AI-generated puffy pontiff image inspires new warning from Pope Francis
Enlarge / A cropped portion of an AI-generated image of Pope Francis wearing a puffy coat that went viral in March 2023. (credit: @skyferrori on Twitter / Getty Images (background))
After a realistic AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a puffy coat went viral on social media last year, the Pope himself apparently took notice, reports Reuters. In a message for the 58th World Day of Social Communications, Francis writes, "We need but think of the long-standing problem of disinformation in the form of fake news, which today can employ 'deepfakes,' namely the creation and diffusion of images that appear perfectly plausible but false (I too have been an object of this)."
The Pope also warns about audio messages that "use a person’s voice to say things which that person never said," he continues. "The technology of simulation behind these programs can be useful in certain specific fields, but it becomes perverse when it distorts our relationship with others and with reality."
In March 2023, a Twitter user named "skyferrori" used the Midjourney v5 image synthesis service to create a convincing fake photo of Pope Francis wearing a long white puffer coat and posted it on the service. It quickly went viral and today stands at over 197,000 likes and 28.1 million views. Many people thought it was a real photo, and it was notable at the time for being one of the first AI-generated images that fooled a large audience online.
Republicans in 20 states urge Supreme Court to uphold state social media laws
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | OsakaWayne Studios)
Republican officials from 20 states, including 19 state attorneys general, are backing Florida and Texas in a Supreme Court battle over states' authority to regulate how social media firms moderate user-submitted content. The states on Monday submitted a brief arguing that they "have authority to prohibit mass communication platforms from censoring speech."
"The Federal Government knows it will be much more difficult for federal officials to induce social media companies to suppress speech if state law prohibits it," the Republican state officials wrote, pointing out that the US government previously submitted a brief opposing the state laws. The US opposition "shows that the Texas and Florida laws, far from infringing the First Amendment, in fact shield social media companies from government pressure and deprive government of the opportunity to control expression," the state officials wrote.
The Florida law would make it illegal for large social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to ban politicians, while the Texas law prohibits social media companies from moderating content based on a user's "viewpoint." NetChoice, a lobby group for tech companies, challenged both laws in court.
Prepare for more upscaled classic PC game mods with new RTX Remaster beta toolkit
Enlarge / A sample of the RTX Remix user interface being used to develop the enhanced Portal with RTX. (credit: Nvidia)
In the waning days of 2022, when Nvidia was preparing to release the impressive, ray tracing-enabled Portal with RTX, we were already looking toward a future when "the Nvidia RTX Remix modding platform used to remaster Portal will also be released to the general public at some point, making it easier to create updated versions of old DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 games with AI-upscaled textures and modern lighting effects," as we wrote at the time. That "at some point" future has fully arrived this week with Nvidia's open beta launch of its RTX Remix modding tools.
This isn't the wider modding community's first taste of RTX Remix's upscaling and lighting tools. Nvidia released an alpha version of the RTX runtime last April, offering "capture and replacement" modules that could upgrade older game assets and add modern graphical features like DLSS3 at playback. ModDB lists dozens of older games with an RTX.conf file that offers some level of RTX-powered graphical enhancement.
But this week's official open beta launch gives "experienced modders" new tools to easily create and insert these kinds of updated graphical effects and models in classic titles. That includes "generative AI texture tools" that Nvidia says use "our own proprietary model trained on our in-house dataset" to automatically upscale low-res textures to up to four times the original resolution. It also means the ability to add "physically accurate dynamic lights" that work with ray-tracing-capable hardware and a variety of open source models and material maps for modders to play with.
The USPS agrees to buy six Canoo LDV electric vans, delivered by April
Enlarge / Canoo will supply six LDV 190s to the USPS by the end of this quarter. (credit: Canoo)
The electric vehicle startup Canoo announced today that it has signed a purchase agreement with the United States Postal Service to supply USPS with six LDV 190 EVs by the end of March. The futuristic-looking electric vans will be provided in a right-hand drive configuration for ease of deliveries.
"The multi-purpose platform with steer-by-wire technology, and a unique low-profile suspension system allows for a readily configurable right-hand drive system while maintaining desired roll and ride stability," said Canoo CEO and Executive Chairman Tony Aquila.
The news comes two days after the USPS formally unveiled its first EV charging stations, which have been installed at its South Atlanta Sorting and Delivery Center. It's the first in what will be hundreds of installations at about 400 sites across the US, which the USPS says it will convert to sorting and delivery centers that will act as local hubs for EVs on local carrier routes. Currently, it has opened 29 so far.
Apple aims to run AI models directly on iPhones, other devices
Enlarge (credit: FT montage/AFP/Getty Images)
Apple is quietly increasing its capabilities in artificial intelligence, making a series of acquisitions, staff hires, and hardware updates that are designed to bring AI to its next generation of iPhones.
Industry data and academic papers, as well as insights from tech sector insiders, suggest the Californian company has focused most attention on tackling the technological problem of running AI through mobile devices.
The iPhone maker has been more active than rival Big Tech companies in buying AI startups, acquiring 21 since the beginning of 2017, research from PitchBook shows. The most recent of those acquisitions was its purchase in early 2023 of California-based startup WaveOne, which offers AI-powered video compression.
Alaska Airlines says it found many loose bolts on its Boeing 737 Max 9s
Enlarge / The missing emergency door of Alaska Airlines N704AL, a 737 Max 9, which made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport on January 5 is covered and taped, in Portland, Oregon on January 23, 2024. (credit: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Inspections of Alaska Airlines' fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9s has turned up "many" loose bolts, according to CEO Ben Minicucci. "I'm more than frustrated and disappointed," he told NBC News, "I am angry. This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people."
The inspections follow a near-disaster on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on January 5 of this year, when a blanking plate blew off the 737 Max 9 aircraft mid-flight. The loss of the blanking plate resulted in a rapid decompression of the plane, but fortunately did not result in loss of control of the aircraft or any physical injuries to passengers or crew.
The following day, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive that has grounded all 737 Max 9s fitted with mid-cabin door plugs—other specifications of the plane use actual doors at that location in order to allow for more passengers in the cabin.
Review: Radeon 7600 XT offers peace of mind via lots of RAM, remains a midrange GPU
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XFX's take on AMD's Radeon RX 7600 XT. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]
We don't need a long intro for this one: AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 XT is almost exactly the same as last year's RX 7600, but with a mild bump to the GPU's clock speed and 16GB of memory instead of 8GB. It also costs $329 instead of $269, the current MSRP (and current street price) for the regular RX 7600.
It's a card with a pretty narrow target audience: people who are worried about buying a GPU with 8GB of memory, but who aren't worried enough about future-proofing or RAM requirements to buy a more powerful GPU. It's priced reasonably well, at least—$60 is a lot to pay for extra memory, but $329 was the MSRP for the Radeon RX 6600 back in 2021. If you want more memory in a current-generation card, you otherwise generally need to jump up into the $450 range (for the 12GB RX 7700 XT or the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti) or beyond.
RX 7700 XT RX 7600 RX 7600 XT RX 6600 RX 6600 XT RX 6650 XT RX 6750 XT Compute units (Stream processors) 54 (3,456) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 28 (1,792) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 40 (2,560) Boost Clock 2,544 MHz 2,600 MHz 2,760 MHz 2,490 MHz 2,589 MHz 2,635 MHz 2,600 MHz Memory Bus Width 192-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 192-bit Memory Clock 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 1,750 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,190 MHz 2,250 MHz Memory size 12GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6 Total board power (TBP) 245 W 165 W 190 W 132 W 160 W 180 W 250 WThe fact of the matter is that this is the same silicon we've already seen. The clock speed bumps do provide a small across-the-board performance uplift, and the impact of the extra RAM does become apparent in a few of our tests. But the card doesn't fundamentally alter the AMD-vs-Nvidia-vs-Intel dynamic in the $300-ish graphics card market, though it addresses a couple of the regular RX 7600's most glaring weaknesses.
Inside the making of National Geographic’s A Real Bug’s Life docuseries
Enlarge / A bold jumping spider struggles to survive in New York City in A Real Bug's Life, narrated by Awkwafina. (credit: National Geographic/Jamie Thorpe)
Pixar's 1998 animated film A Bug's Life celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, and National Geographic decided to mark the occasion with a new science docuseries, A Real Bug's Life, narrated by Awkwafina. As with the Pixar film, the bugs (and adjacent creatures) are the main characters here, from cockroaches, monarch butterflies, and praying mantises to bees, spiders, and even hermit crabs. The 10 episodes tell their stories as they struggle to survive in their respective habitats, capturing entire ecosystems in the process: city streets, a farm, the rainforest, a Texas backyard, and the African savannah, for example.
The genesis for the docuseries lies in a rumored sequel to the original film. That inspired Producer Bill Markham, among others, to pitch a documentary series on a real bug's life to National Geographic. "It was the quickest commission ever," Markham told Ars. "They said yes literally over a weekend. It was such a good idea, to film bugs in an entertaining family way with Pixar sensibilities." And thanks to an advent of new technologies, plus a couple of skilled "bug wranglers," the team was able to capture the bug's-eye view of the world beautifully.
According to Director of Photography Nathan Small, long tube-like probe lenses enabled the camera crew to capture footage from inside tiny cracks and holes to better document the buggy behavior. They also made better use of macro lenses. "Before when we had macro lenses, they were all quite long and the background would be really smoooshy with everything out of focus," Small told Ars. "We tried to shoot everything from very low, very wide angles with lots of context, so you can experience the world from the point of view of the animal and see how it sits in its location, rather than just a smooshy background."
Daily Telescope: Shooting a laser into the sky from Antarctica
Enlarge / Shooting lidar into the night sky. (credit: Steve Erskine)
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
Good morning. It's January 24, and today's image features an astronomical sight of another sort.
The image was taken by Steve Erskine a few years ago in Antarctica. Astronomers use lidar to measure the temperature of Earth's atmosphere to calibrate their observations. In this photo, the lidar is being shot nearly straight up from an observatory at McMurdo Station.
Wild Apples: The 12 weirdest and rarest Macs ever made
Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Jonathan Zufi / Apple)
Forty years ago today, Apple released the first Macintosh. Since that fateful day in 1984, Apple has released hundreds of Mac models that run the gamut from amazing to strange. In honor of this birthday, we thought it would be fun to comb through history and pull out the rarest and most unusual production Mac models ever made—including one from another company.
Each machine listed below was manufactured and sold to the public—no prototypes here. These computers highlight not only Apple's innovative spirit but also its willingness to take risks and experiment with design and functionality. It's worth noting that what is "weird" in this case is a matter of opinion, so you might have your own personal picks that we missed. If that's the case, let us know in the comments. And we'd love to hear what the Macintosh means to you on this 40th anniversary.
Special thanks to Jonathan Zufi for providing several photos for this article. In 2014, Zufi created an excellent coffee table book called Iconic: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation and formerly ran the Shrine of Apple website.
Mass exploitation of Ivanti VPNs is infecting networks around the globe
Enlarge / Cybercriminals or anonymous hackers use malware on mobile phones to hack personal and business passwords online. (credit: Getty Images)
Hackers suspected of working for the Chinese government are mass exploiting a pair of critical vulnerabilities that give them complete control of virtual private network appliances sold by Ivanti, researchers said.
As of Tuesday morning, security company Censys detected 492 Ivanti VPNs that remained infected out of 26,000 devices exposed to the Internet. More than a quarter of the compromised VPNs—121—resided in the US. The three countries with the next biggest concentrations were Germany, with 26, South Korea, with 24, and China, with 21.
Microsoft’s customer cloud service hosted the most infected devices with 13, followed by cloud environments from Amazon with 12, and Comcast at 10.
Sierra Space is blowing up stuff to prove inflatable habitats are safe
Enlarge / Sierra Space's 300 cubic meter inflatable habitat burst at 77 psi, five times the pressure it would need to handle in space. (credit: Sierra Space)
Sierra Space says it has demonstrated in a ground test that a full-scale inflatable habitat for a future space station can meet NASA's recommended safety standards, clearing a technical gate on the road toward building a commercial outpost in low-Earth orbit.
During a December test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Sierra Space's 300 cubic meter inflatable structure withstood five times the pressure it would need to handle in space. The so-called ultimate burst pressure test was designed to measure the limits of the soft goods technology Sierra Space is developing alongside ILC Dover, which also built spacesuits for NASA.
The 27-foot-diameter (8.2-meter) inflatable structure burst at 77 psi, exceeding NASA's recommended safety standard of 60.8 psi, which is four times the module's real-life operating pressure at 15.2 psi.
The White House has its own pharmacy—and, boy, was it shady under Trump
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Erik Pronske Photography)
The White House has its own pharmacy that, until recently, could perhaps best be described as a hot mess, according to a recent investigation report from the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General.
For years, the White House Medical Unit, run by the White House Military Office, provided the full scope of pharmaceutical services to senior officials and staff—it stored, inventoried, prescribed, dispensed, and disposed of prescription medications, including opioids and sleep medications. However, it was not staffed by a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy support staff, nor was it credentialed by any outside agency.
The operations of this pseudo-pharmacy went as well as one might expect, according to the DoD OIG's alarming investigation report. The investigation was prompted by complaints in May 2018 alleging that an unnamed "senior military medical officer" was engaged in "improper medical practices." This resulted in the OIG's investigation, which included 70 interviews of military office officials who worked in the White House between 2009 and 2018 and covers the office's activity until early 2020. However, the investigation heavily focused on prescription drug records and care between 2017 and 2019 during the Trump administration.
A “robot” should be chemical, not steel, argues man who coined the word
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
In 1921, Czech playwright Karel Čapek and his brother Josef invented the word "robot" in a sci-fi play called R.U.R. (short for Rossum's Universal Robots). As Even Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum points out, Čapek wasn't happy about how the term's meaning evolved to denote mechanical entities, straying from his original concept of artificial human-like beings based on chemistry.
In a newly translated column called "The Author of the Robots Defends Himself," published in Lidové Noviny on June 9, 1935, Čapek expresses his frustration about how his original vision for robots was being subverted. His arguments still apply to both modern robotics and AI. In this column, he referred to himself in the third-person:
For his robots were not mechanisms. They were not made of sheet metal and cogwheels. They were not a celebration of mechanical engineering. If the author was thinking of any of the marvels of the human spirit during their creation, it was not of technology, but of science. With outright horror, he refuses any responsibility for the thought that machines could take the place of people, or that anything like life, love, or rebellion could ever awaken in their cogwheels. He would regard this somber vision as an unforgivable overvaluation of mechanics or as a severe insult to life.
This recently resurfaced article comes courtesy of a new English translation of Čapek's play called R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life accompanied by 20 essays on robotics, philosophy, politics, and AI. The editor, Jitka Čejková, a professor at the Chemical Robotics Laboratory in Prague, aligns her research with Čapek's original vision. She explores "chemical robots"—microparticles resembling living cells—which she calls "liquid robots."
Patreon: Blocking platforms from sharing user video data is unconstitutional
Enlarge (credit: shaunl | E+)
Patreon, a monetization platform for content creators, has asked a federal judge to deem unconstitutional a rarely invoked law that some privacy advocates consider one of the nation's "strongest protections of consumer privacy against a specific form of data collection." Such a ruling would end decades that the US spent carefully shielding the privacy of millions of Americans' personal video viewing habits.
The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) blocks businesses from sharing data with third parties on customers' video purchases and rentals. At a minimum, the VPPA requires written consent each time a business wants to share this sensitive video data—including the title, description, and, in most cases, the subject matter.
The VPPA was passed in 1988 in response to backlash over a reporter sharing the video store rental history of a judge, Robert Bork, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. The report revealed that Bork apparently liked spy thrillers and British costume dramas and suggested that maybe the judge had a family member who dug John Hughes movies.
OnePlus 12 gets $800 US release along with the interesting $500 OnePlus 12R
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The OnePlus 12. [credit: OnePlus ]
OnePlus previously announced the OnePlus 12 flagship smartphone in December, but now it's getting a US release and pricing. The phone ships on February 6 in the US and Canada with a $800 price tag. OnePlus is also bringing the rather interesting OnePlus 12R to the US, a 6.8-inch device running last year's flagship Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, for $500.
$800 is a pretty good price for a flagship phone. Samsung's 6.8-inch flagship is the $1,300 Galaxy S24. The Pixel 8 Pro is a $1,000, so OnePlus is undercutting the competition quite a bit. As we said, this device was already announced in December, but the highlights are an impressive 5400 mAh battery and super fast charging. The phone has 80 W proprietary wired charging in the US and 100 W internationally, while wireless charging is 50 W. OnePlus says 80 W is still fast enough to go from 1 percent to 100 percent in 30 minutes. OnePlus only promises an IP65 dust and water resistance rating, so it's not submergible, which is worse than most flagships. Other than that, it's a lot of normal flagship things: a 6.82-inch, 3168×1440 120 Hz OLED that—unlike Samsung and Google—is still curved, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and too many cameras.
The 24GB of RAM/1TB of storage spec apparently isn't coming to the US—the $800 model is 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and there's a single higher tier of 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $900. The white color is also not arriving here. You get black for $800, with the $900 model arriving in black or green.
OpenWrt, now 20 years old, is crafting its own future-proof reference hardware
Enlarge / Failing an image of the proposed reference hardware by the OpenWrt group, let us gaze upon where this all started: inside a device that tried to quietly use open source software without crediting or releasing it. (credit: Jim Salter)
OpenWrt, the open source firmware that sprang from Linksys' use of open source code in its iconic WRT54G router and subsequent release of its work, is 20 years old this year. To keep the project going, lead developers have proposed creating a "fully upstream supported hardware design," one that would prevent the need for handling "binary blobs" in modern router hardware and let DIY router enthusiasts forge their own path.
OpenWRT project members, 13 of which signed off on this hardware, are keeping the "OpenWrt One" simple, while including "some nice features we believe all OpenWrt supported platforms should have," including "almost unbrickable" low-level firmware, an on-board real-time clock with a battery backup, and USB-PD power. The price should be under $100 and the schematics and code publicly available.
But OpenWrt will not be producing or selling these boards, "for a ton of reasons." The group is looking to the Banana Pi makers to distribute a fitting device, with every device producing a donation to the Software Freedom Conservancy earmarked for OpenWrt. That money could then be used for hosting expenses, or "maybe an OpenWrt summit."
iOS 17.3 adds multiple features originally planned for iOS 17
Enlarge / The iPhone 15 Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)
Apple yesterday released iOS and iPadOS 17.3 as well as watchOS 10.3, tvOS 17.3, and macOS Sonoma 14.3 for all supported devices.
iOS 17.3 primarily adds collaborative playlists in Apple Music, and what Apple calls "Stolen Device Protection." Collaborative playlists have been on a bit of a journey; they were promised as part of iOS 17, then added in the beta of iOS 17.2, but removed before that update went live. Now they're finally reaching all users.
When enabled, Stolen Device Protection requires Face ID or Touch ID authentication "with no passcode fallback" for some sensitive actions on the phone.
Urban agriculture’s carbon footprint can be worse than that of large farms
Enlarge (credit: Bruce Yuanyue Bi)
A few years back, the Internet was abuzz with the idea of vertical farms running down the sides of urban towers, with the idea that growing crops where they're actually consumed could eliminate the carbon emissions involved with shipping plant products long distances. But lifecycle analysis of those systems, which require a lot of infrastructure and energy, suggest they'd have a hard time doing better than more traditional agriculture.
But those systems represent only a small fraction of urban agriculture as it's practiced. Most urban farming is a mix of local cooperative gardens and small-scale farms located within cities. And a lot less is known about the carbon footprint of this sort of farming. Now, a large international collaboration has worked with a number of these farms to get a handle on their emissions in order to compare those to large-scale agriculture.
The results suggest it's possible that urban farming can have a lower impact. But it requires choosing the right crops and a long-term commitment to sustainability.
Novel camera system lets us see the world through eyes of birds and bees
A new camera system and software package allows researchers and filmmakers to capture animal-view videos. Credit: Vasas et al., 2024.
Who among us hasn't wondered about how animals perceive the world, which is often different from how humans do so? There are various methods by which scientists, photographers, filmmakers, and others attempt to reconstruct, say, the colors that a bee sees as it hunts for a flower ripe for pollinating. Now an interdisciplinary team has developed an innovative camera system that is faster and more flexible in terms of lighting conditions than existing systems, allowing it to capture moving images of animals in their natural setting, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS Biology.
“We’ve long been fascinated by how animals see the world. Modern techniques in sensory ecology allow us to infer how static scenes might appear to an animal," said co-author Daniel Hanley, a biologist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. "However, animals often make crucial decisions on moving targets (e.g., detecting food items, evaluating a potential mate’s display, etc.). Here, we introduce hardware and software tools for ecologists and filmmakers that can capture and display animal-perceived colors in motion.”
Per Hanley and his co-authors, different animal species possess unique sets of photoreceptors that are sensitive to a wide range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to the infrared, dependent on each animal's specific ecological needs. Some animals can even detect polarized light. So every species will perceive color a bit differently. Honeybees and birds, for instance, are sensitive to UV light, which isn't visible to human eyes. "As neither our eyes nor commercial cameras capture such variations in light, wide swaths of visual domains remain unexplored," the authors wrote. "This makes false color imagery of animal vision powerful and compelling."