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"George R.R. Martin has co-authored a physics paper."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 24 January 2025, 0318 UTC.

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

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George R.R. Martin has co-authored a physics paper

George R.R. Martin explores physics concepts

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100+Ars Technica - All content / 9h

Although fans of A Song of Ice and Fire might still be hankering for the long-delayed next book in the series, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author George R.R. Martin has instead added a different item to his long list of publications: a peer-reviewed physics paper just published in the American Journal of Physics that he co-authored. The paper derives a formula to describe the dynamics of a fiction

Trump’s FCC chair gets to work on punishing TV news stations accused of bias

FCC Chair revives media complaints

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100+Ars Technica - All content / 9h

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has revived three complaints against broadcast stations accused of bias against President Donald Trump. Outgoing Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last week directed the FCC to dismiss the complaints against CBS, ABC, and NBC stations, along with a fourth complaint about Fox, in what she called a stand for the First Amendment. Rosenworcel said

Today

Backdoor infecting VPNs used “magic packets” for stealth and security

Juniper routers targeted by malware

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Ars Technica - All content / 2h

When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can’t be leveraged by competing groups or detected by defenders. One countermeasure is to equip the backdoor with a passive agent that remains dormant until it receives what’s known in the business as a “magic packet.” On Thursday, researchers revealed that a never-before-seen backdoor

Way more game makers are working on PC titles than ever, survey says

80% of developers favor PC games

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Ars Technica - All content / 3h

Four out of five game developers are currently working on a project for the PC, a sizable increase from 66 percent of developers a year ago. That's according to Informa's latest State of the Game Industry survey , which partnered with Omdia to ask over 3,000 game industry professionals about their work in advance of March's Game Developers Conference. The 80 percent of developers working on PC pr

OpenAI launches Operator, an AI agent that can operate your computer

OpenAI to launch Operator tool

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34Ars Technica - All content / 4h

On Thursday, OpenAI released a research preview of " Operator ," a web automation tool that uses a new AI model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA) to control computers through a visual interface. The system performs tasks by viewing and interacting with on-screen elements like buttons and text fields similar to how a human would. Operator is available today for subscribers of the $200 per month Ch

All federal agencies ordered to terminate remote work—ideally within 30 days

Trump mandates federal employees return in-person

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All federal agencies received a memo Wednesday requiring the termination of remote work options, with return-to-office plans due by end of day Friday. In the memo, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, Charles Ezell, told the heads and acting heads of all departments and agencies that the change is due to Donald Trump's Return to In-Person Work presidential memorandum, which

Trump can save TikTok without forcing a sale, ByteDance board member claims

TikTok resumes services in US

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Ars Technica - All content / 5h

TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly still searching for non-sale options to stay in the US after the Supreme Court upheld a national security law requiring that TikTok's US operations either be shut down or sold to a non-foreign adversary. Last weekend, TikTok briefly went dark in the US, only to come back online hours later after Donald Trump reassured ByteDance that the US law would not be enf

Doom: The Dark Ages wants to be more like the original Doom

DOOM The Dark Ages releases May 15

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Ars Technica - All content / 7h

The modern Doom games have been a master class in reviving a beloved retro gaming series. Both 2016's Doom and 2020's Doom Eternal paid homage to both the look and feel of the original Doom titles without being slavishly devoted to older gameplay conventions that can feel dated decades later. Yet by the end of Doom Eternal , you could feel the modernized gameplay system threatening to burst at th

Court rules FBI’s warrantless searches violated Fourth Amendment

FISA Section 702 raises privacy concerns

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Ars Technica - All content / 9h

It's official: The FBI's warrantless searches of communications seized to protect US national security have at last been ruled unconstitutional and in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In a major December ruling made public this week, US District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall settled one of the biggest debates about feared government overreach that has prompted calls to reform Section 702 of the For

George R.R. Martin has co-authored a physics paper

100+Ars Technica - All content / 10h

Although fans of A Song of Ice and Fire might still be hankering for the long-delayed next book in the series, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author George R.R. Martin has instead added a different item to his long list of publications: a peer-reviewed physics paper just published in the American Journal of Physics that he co-authored. The paper derives a formula to describe the dynamics of a fiction

UK opens probe into Google’s and Apple’s mobile platforms

UK investigates Apple Google ecosystems

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Ars Technica - All content / 12h

The UK’s competition watchdog has launched an investigation into Apple's and Google’s mobile platforms, just days after the government forced out its chair as part of a push to cut the regulatory burden on business. The Competition and Markets Authority said on Thursday it would examine whether the creators of the iPhone and Android smartphone operating systems should be subjected to extra scruti

600 kW fast-charging pitstops are coming to Formula E

Formula E introduces PIT BOOST feature

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Ars Technica - All content / 13h

Now 11 seasons in, Formula E has come a long way from its sometimes chaotic early days and those mid-race pitstops to change cars. Car swaps went away a long time ago, but when the series gets back to racing next month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the mid-race pit stop will be back. Except this time, the cars will be quickly recharged by powerful 600 kW fast chargers. The new race feature, which Form

Cadillac gives the Lyriq a race car-inspired glow-up

2026 Cadillac Lyriq-V is fastest SUV

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Ars Technica - All content / 13h

The Cadillac Lyriq was the first of a new breed of General Motors' electric vehicles. Built around a common battery platform ( which used to be called Ultium ), the midsize SUV has been on sale for about three years now, and for model year 2026, there's a new version available, the first Cadillac EV to wear the V-series badge. "V-Series captures the spirit of Cadillac, embodying our relentless pu

Data breach hitting PowerSchool looks very, very bad

Tornillo ISD suffers cybersecurity incident

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100+Ars Technica - All content / 14h

Parents, students, teachers, and administrators throughout North America are smarting from what could be the biggest data breach of 2025: an intrusion into the network of a cloud-based service storing detailed data of millions of pupils and school personnel. The hack, which came to light earlier this month, hit PowerSchool, a Folsom, California, firm that provides cloud-based software to some 16,

Researchers say new attack could take down the European power grid

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Late last month, researchers revealed a finding that’s likely to shock some people and confirm the low expectations of others: Renewable energy facilities throughout Central Europe use unencrypted radio signals to receive commands to feed or ditch power into or from the grid that serves some 450 million people throughout the continent. Fabian Bräunlein and Luca Melette stumbled on their discovery

Yesterday

NASA moves swiftly to end DEI programs, asks employees to “report” violations

Federal DEI offices to close

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NASA's acting administrator is moving swiftly to remove diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—or DEIA—programs from the space agency. In an email sent to agency employees on Wednesday afternoon, acting administrator Janet Petro wrote, "We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders titled Endi

Florida man eats diet of butter, cheese, beef; cholesterol oozes from his body

500+Ars Technica - All content / 1d

What could go wrong with eating an extremely high-fat diet of beef, cheese, and sticks of butter? Well, for one thing, your cholesterol levels could reach such stratospheric levels that lipids start oozing from your blood vessels, forming yellowish nodules on your skin. That was the disturbing case of a man in Florida who showed up at a Tampa hospital with a three-week history of painless, yellow

Apple must face suit over alleged policy of underpaying female workers

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Apple must face a potential class action alleging that Apple had a policy of paying men higher salaries than women for similar work . On Tuesday, California Superior Court Judge Ethan P. Schulman filed an order that largely denies Apple's motions to strike the class allegations and suspend several class claims. This allows what one lawyer representing women suing, Joseph Sellers, said was "a very

Reddit won’t interfere with users revolting against X with subreddit bans

Reddit bans links to X

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Reddit is staying out of the current revolt against social media website X and, to a lesser degree, Meta, on its platform. Since Tuesday, hundreds of subreddits have discussed and/or implemented bans against the site formerly called Twitter, as reported by 404 Media . Dozens of subreddits have already agreed to disallow the sharing of any links to X, with moderators (volunteer Reddit users) agree

Anthropic chief says AI could surpass “almost all humans at almost everything” shortly after 2027

Anthropic CEO predicts AI surpassing humans

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On Tuesday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that AI models may surpass human capabilities "in almost everything" within two to three years, according to a Wall Street Journal interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Speaking at Journal House in Davos, Amodei said , "I don't know exactly when it'll come, I don't know if it'll be 2027. I think it's plausible it could be lon

Wine 10.0 brings Arm Windows apps to Linux, still is not an emulator

Wine 10.0 released for Linux

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Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The open source Wine project—sometimes stylized WINE, for Wine Is Not an Emulator—has become an important tool for companies and individuals who want to make Windows apps and games run on operating systems like Linux or even macOS. The CrossOver software for Mac and Windows, Apple's Game Porting Toolkit , and the Proton project that powers Valve's SteamOS and the Steam Deck are all rooted in Wine

Trump admin fires security board investigating Chinese hack of large ISPs

DHS fires all advisory committee members

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The Department of Homeland Security has terminated all members of advisory committees, including one that has been investigating a major Chinese hack of large US telecom firms. "The Cyber Safety Review Board—a Department of Homeland Security investigatory body stood up under a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents—has been cleared of non-government members

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 event was an AI presentation with occasional phone hardware

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Samsung announced the Galaxy S25, S25+ , and S25 Ultra at its Unpacked event today. What is different from last year's models ? With the phones themselves, not much, other than a new chipset and a wide camera. But pure AI optimism? Samsung managed to pack a whole lot more of that into its launch event and promotional materials. The corners on the S25 Ultra are a bit more rounded, the edges are fl

Fast radio burst in long-dead galaxy puzzles astronomers

Fast radio burst found in ancient galaxy

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Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are puzzling phenomena because their details are so difficult to resolve, and observations to date have been inconsistent. Astronomers added another piece to the puzzle with the detection of an FRB that seems to originate in a dead galaxy that is no longer producing new stars, according to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, along with a related pa

As OpenAI launches $500B “Stargate” project, critics express skepticism

Biden AI order canceled OpenAI initiative launched

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On Tuesday, OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX announced plans to form Stargate, a new company that will invest $500 billion in AI computing infrastructure across the United States over four years. The announcement came during a White House meeting with President Donald Trump, who called it the "largest AI infrastructure project in history." However, the origins of the Stargate project extend back

The Internet is (once again) awash with IoT botnets delivering record DDoSes

5 TTPs

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We’re only three weeks into 2025, and it’s already shaping up to be the year of Internet of Things-driven DDoSes. Reports are rolling in of threat actors infecting thousands of home and office routers, web cameras, and other Internet-connected devices. Here is a sampling of research released since the first of the year. Lax security, ample bandwidth A post on Tuesday from content-delivery network

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht pardoned by Trump 10 years into life sentence

Trump may pardon Ross Ulbricht

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The self-declared "pro-crypto president" Donald Trump pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on Tuesday. Ulbricht, 40, was about 10 years into his life sentence for helming an online black market where drug dealers, money launderers, and traffickers used bitcoins to mask more than $214 million in illicit trades. (Ars thoroughly documented the Silk Road saga here .) Trump had pledged at the Libe

Google increases investment in Anthropic by another $1 billion

Google invests over $1 billion in Anthropic

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Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic, boosting its position in the start-up as Silicon Valley titans rush to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. The Alphabet-owned search behemoth had already committed about $2 billion to Anthropic and was now increasing its stake in the group, according to four people with knowledge of the situ

All the things Nintendo didn’t tell us about the Switch 2

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After literal years of speculation and leaks , it was nice to get an actual glimpse of the Switch 2 hardware (and its increased size ) last week. But even with the console officially "revealed," there's still a wide range of important unknown Switch 2 details that Nintendo has yet to address. As we wait for the company to dribble out additional information in the coming weeks and months, we thoug

Jan 21, 2025

Bambu Lab pushes a “control system” for 3D printers, and boy, did it not go well

Bambu Lab enhances 3D printer security

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Ars Technica - All content / 2d

Bambu Lab , a major maker of 3D printers for home users and commercial "farms," is pushing an update to its devices that it claims will improve security while still offering third-party tools "authorized" access. Some in the user community—and 3D printing advocates broadly—are pushing back, suggesting the firm has other, more controlling motives. As is perhaps appropriate for 3D printing, this ma

New year, same streaming headaches: Netflix raises prices by up to 16 percent

Netflix stock soars after price hike

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Today Netflix, the biggest streaming service based on subscriber count, announced that it will increase subscription prices by up to $2.50 per month. In a letter to investors [ PDF ], Netflix announced price changes starting today in the US, Canada, Argentina, and Portugal. People who subscribe to Netflix's cheapest ad-free plan (Standard) will see the biggest increase in monthly costs. The subsc

RIP EA’s Origin launcher: We knew ye all too well, unfortunately

Origin client shuts down April 2025

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Ars Technica - All content / 2d

After 14 years, EA will retire its controversial Origin game distribution app for Windows, the company announced . Origin will stop working on April 17, 2025. Folks still using it will be directed to install the newer EA app, which launched in 2022. The launch of Origin in 2011 was a flashpoint of controversy among gamers, as EA—already not a beloved company by this point—began pulling titles lik

Apple Intelligence, previously opt-in by default, enabled automatically in iOS 18.3

iOS 18.3 enables Apple Intelligence automatically

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Apple has sent out release candidate builds of the upcoming iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS 15.3 updates to developers today. But they come with one tweak that hasn't been reported on, per MacRumors : They enable all of the AI-powered Apple Intelligence features by default during setup. When Apple Intelligence was initially released in iOS 18.1, the features were off by default, unless users cho

Cutting-edge Chinese “reasoning” model rivals OpenAI o1—and it’s free to download

DeepSeek launches competitive reasoning models

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On Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released its new R1 model family under an open MIT license , with its largest version containing 671 billion parameters. The company claims the model performs at levels comparable to OpenAI's o1 simulated reasoning (SR) model on several math and coding benchmarks. Alongside the release of the main DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1 models, DeepSeek published six s

Satellite firm bucks miniaturization trend, aims to build big for big rockets

Ars Technica - All content / 2d

A potentially disruptive satellite company launched its first spacecraft last week as part of a Transporter mission flown on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The demonstration mission from a California-based firm named K2 aims to "burn down" the risk of the technology that will fly on the company's first full-sized satellite. So far, so good, but it's early days for the demo flight. Founded a little les

How to get a perfect salt ring deposit in your pasta pot

Salt deposits form in pasta pans

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Ars Technica - All content / 2d

Physicist Mathieu Souzy of the University Twente was enjoying an evening of pasta and board games with several colleagues when the conversation turned to how adding salt to a pasta pot to make it boil faster can leave a white ring on the bottom of the pot. Ever the curious scientists, they wondered about the various factors that would contribute to creating the perfect circular pattern for a salt

Trump issues flurry of orders on TikTok, DOGE, social media, AI, and energy

Trump pauses TikTok ban enforcement

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President Donald Trump's flurry of day-one actions included a reprieve for TikTok, the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an order on social media "censorship," a declaration of an energy emergency, and reversal of a Biden order on artificial intelligence. The TikTok executive order attempts to delay enforcement of a US law that requires TikTok to be banned unless its Chine

Southern California wildfires likely outpace ability of wildlife to adapt

Residents displaced by wildfires await return

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Ars Technica - All content / 2d

As fires spread with alarming speed through the Pacific Palisades region of Los Angeles Tuesday, Jan. 7, a local TV news crew recorded a mountain lion trailed by two young cubs running through a neighborhood north of the fire. The three lions were about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest open space. Another TV crew captured video of a disoriented, seemingly orphaned fawn trotting down the

California’s air pollution waiver and the “EV mandate” are banned by Trump

Trump revokes Biden's EV target

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US President Donald Trump swore his oath of office on Monday, ascending yet again to the head of the federal government. As widely expected, he signed a swath of executive orders on his first day, many aimed at upending existing policies and satisfying grievances, whether that's pulling the country out of membership of the World Health Organization or reversing the nation's clean vehicle policies