"Archaeologists just mapped a Bronze Age megafortress in Georgia (Southern Caucasus)."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 09 January 2025, 1411 UTC.

Content and Source:  https://arstechnica.com.

Please check link or scroll down to read your selections.  Thanks for joining us today.

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

ARS Technica

50

Most popular

Archaeologists just mapped a Bronze Age megafortress in Georgia

Ars Technica - All content / 45min

A sprawling 3,500-year-old fortress offers tantalizing clues about a culture that once dotted the southern Caucasus mountains with similar walled communities. Archaeologists recently used a drone to map a sprawling 3,500-year-old fortress in the Caucasus Mountains of southern Georgia. The detailed aerial map offers some tantalizing clues about the ancient culture whose people built hundreds of si

Meta axes third-party fact-checkers in time for second Trump term

Zuckerberg aligns with Trump

•

200+Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Meta announced today that it's ending the third-party fact-checking program it introduced in 2016, and will rely instead on a Community Notes approach similar to what's used on Elon Musk's X platform. The end of third-party fact-checking and related changes to Meta policies could help the company make friends in the Trump administration and in governments of conservative-leaning states that have

US sues six of the biggest landlords over “algorithmic pricing schemes”

Justice Dept sues landlords for pricing scheme

•

90Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The US Justice Department today announced it filed an antitrust lawsuit against "six of the nation's largest landlords for participating in algorithmic pricing schemes that harmed renters." One of the landlords, Cortland Management, agreed to a settlement "that requires it to cooperate with the government, stop using its competitors' sensitive data to set rents and stop using the same algorithm a

Yesterday

Here’s how hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

Hacked Chrome extensions steal data

•

Ars Technica - All content / 13h

The people overseeing the security of Google’s Chrome browser explicitly forbid third-party extension developers from trying to manipulate how the browser extensions they submit are presented in the Chrome Web Store . The policy specifically calls out search-manipulating techniques such as listing multiple extensions that provide the same experience or plastering extension descriptions with loose

Italy’s plan to buy Starlink data deals a serious blow to European space network

SpaceX nears $1.6bn Italian deal

•

Ars Technica - All content / 13h

The Italian government is considering the purchase of satellite Internet services from SpaceX's Starlink constellation, and the potential deal has triggered controversy along political, economic, and spaceflight lines in Europe. The story was initially broken by Bloomberg on Sunday, which reported that Italy is in "advanced talks" with SpaceX to purchase $1.6 billion worth of secure telecommunica

It’s remarkably easy to inject new medical misinformation into LLMs

33Ars Technica - All content / 13h

It's pretty easy to see the problem here: The Internet is brimming with misinformation, and most large language models are trained on a massive body of text obtained from the Internet. Ideally, having substantially higher volumes of accurate information might overwhelm the lies. But is that really the case? A new study by researchers at New York University examines how much medical information ca

Gentrified Doom remake trades chainsaw for cheese knife

Doom reimagined as art experience

•

40Ars Technica - All content / 15h

Just when you thought you had seen every possible Doom mod, two game developers released a free browser game that reimagines the first level of 1993's Doom as an art gallery, replacing demons with paintings and shotguns with wine glasses. Doom: The Gallery Experience , created by Filippo Meozzi and Liam Stone, transforms the iconic E1M1 level into a virtual museum space where players guide a glas

China is having standard flu season despite widespread HMPV fears

Human Metapneumovirus raises concerns

•

Ars Technica - All content / 16h

There's a good chance you've seen headlines about HMPV recently, with some touting "what you need to know" about the virus, aka human metapneumovirus . The answer is: not much. It's a common, usually mild respiratory virus that circulates every year, blending into the throng of other seasonal respiratory illnesses that are often indistinguishable from one another. (The pack includes influenza vir

After embarrassing blunder, AT&T promises bill credits for future outages

AT&T offers bill credits for outages

•

Ars Technica - All content / 16h

AT&T, following last year's embarrassing botched update that kicked every device off its wireless network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, is now promising full-day bill credits to mobile customers for future outages that last at least 60 minutes and meet certain other criteria. A similar promise is being made to fiber customers for unplanned outages lasting at least 20 minutes, but only

How I program with LLMs

Ars Technica - All content / 18h

This article is a summary of my personal experiences with using generative models while programming over the past year. It has not been a passive process. I have intentionally sought ways to use LLMs while programming to learn about them. The result has been that I now regularly use LLMs while working, and I consider their benefits to be net-positive on my productivity. (My attempts to go back to

NASA defers decision on Mars Sample Return to the Trump administration

NASA's Mars Sample Return mission struggles

•

Ars Technica - All content / 19h

For nearly four years, NASA's Perseverance rover has journeyed across an unexplored patch of land on Mars—once home to an ancient river delta—and collected a slew of rock samples sealed inside cigar-sized titanium tubes. These tubes might contain tantalizing clues about past life on Mars, but NASA's ever-changing plans to bring them back to Earth are still unclear. On Tuesday, NASA officials pres

New videos show off larger Nintendo Switch 2, snap-on Joy-Cons

Switch 2 Joy-Con images leaked

•

Ars Technica - All content / 19h

Nintendo still isn't ready to officially reveal any details about the Switch 2 (beyond a brief mention of backward compatibility in November ). But that hasn't stopped gaming accessory maker Genki from giving us one of the best looks yet at the size and shape of Nintendo's upcoming hardware, as well as a video glimpse of how the console's new Joy-Cons will attach to the base tablet. Genki is repo

Misconfigured license plate readers are leaking data and video in real time

ALPR technology enhances law enforcement

•

Ars Technica - All content / 19h

In just 20 minutes this morning, an automated license-plate-recognition (ALPR) system in Nashville, Tennessee, captured photographs and detailed information from nearly 1,000 vehicles as they passed by. Among them: eight black Jeep Wranglers, six Honda Accords, an ambulance, and a yellow Ford Fiesta with a vanity plate. This trove of real-time vehicle data, collected by one of Motorola’s ALPR sys

EU “energetically” probing disinformation, right-wing bias on X, report says

EU investigates X's content moderation

•

Ars Technica - All content / 20h

The European Commission (EC) is planning to "energetically" advance its probe into content moderation on X (formerly Twitter), potentially ordering changes at Elon Musk's social network in the coming months, Bloomberg reported . Since 2023, the EC has been investigating X for possible violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Notably, it's the group's first formal probe under the DSA, which r

Honda shows off “nearly production” EVs and new operating system at CES

Honda unveils 0 Series EVs

•

30Ars Technica - All content / 20h

Honda provided flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and accommodation so Ars could attend its CES events. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. LAS VEGAS—If you've always dreamed of a world where your vehicle is a "partner" around whom you can "always be yourself," Honda has the vehicles for you—at least that's what the Japanese automaker is promising with its new "near production" Honda 0

Jan 7, 2025

As US marks first H5N1 bird flu death, WHO and CDC say risk remains low

Bird flu outbreak threatens dairy farms

•

22Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The H5N1 bird flu situation in the US seems more fraught than ever this week as the virus continues to spread swiftly in dairy cattle and birds while sporadically jumping to humans. On Monday, officials in Louisiana announced that the person who had developed the country's first severe H5N1 infection had died of the infection, marking the country's first H5N1 death. Meanwhile, with no signs of H5

Nearly two years after its radical pivot, Fidelity slashes Relativity’s valuation

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media. Relativity promised to disrupt launch by taking a somewhat niche technology in the space industry at the time, 3D printing, and using it as the foundation for manufacturing rockets. The pitch worked. Relativity's chief executive Tim Ellis liked to brag that his fir

Bye-bye Windows gaming? SteamOS officially expands past the Steam Deck.

SteamOS expands to third-party devices

•

48Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Almost exactly a year ago, we were publicly yearning for the day when more portable gaming PC makers could ditch Windows in favor of SteamOS (without having to resort to touchy unofficial workarounds ). Now, that day has finally come, with Lenovo announcing the upcoming Legion Go S as the first non-Valve handheld to come with an officially licensed copy of SteamOS preinstalled. And Valve promises

Dirty deeds in Denver: Ex-prosecutor faked texts, destroyed devices to frame colleague

Ex-prosecutor disbarred for framing

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

When suspicion began to mount that the young prosecutor, Yujin Choi, might have faked her sexual misconduct allegations against a Denver District Attorney's Office colleague, investigators asked to examine Choi's laptop and cell phone. But just before Choi was to have turned them in, her devices suffered a series of unlikely accidents. First, she said, she managed to drop her phone into a filled

New GeForce 50-series GPUs: There’s the $1,999 5090, and there’s everything else

Nvidia announces DLSS 4 with RTX 50

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Nvidia has good news and bad news for people building or buying gaming PCs. The good news is that three of its four new RTX 50-series GPUs are the same price or slightly cheaper than the RTX 40-series GPUs they're replacing. The RTX 5080 is $999, the same price as the RTX 4080 Super; the 5070 Ti and 5070 are launching for $749 and $549, each $50 less than the 4070 Ti Super and 4070 Super. The bad

Science paper piracy site Sci-Hub shares lots of retracted papers

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Most scientific literature is published in for-profit journals that rely on subscriptions and paywalls to turn a profit. But that trend has been shifting as various governments and funding agencies are requiring that the science they fund be published in open-access journals . The transition is happening gradually, though, and a lot of the historical literature remains locked behind paywalls. The

Ants vs. humans: Solving the piano-mover puzzle

Ants outperform humans in mazes

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Who is better at maneuvering a large load through a maze, ants or humans? The piano-mover puzzle involves trying to transport an oddly shaped load across a constricted environment with various obstructions. It's one of several variations on classic computational motion-planning problems, a key element in numerous robotics applications. But what would happen if you pitted human beings against ants

Lenovo laptop’s rollable screen uses motors to grow from 14 to 16.7 inches

Lenovo unveils ThinkBook Plus Gen 6

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Lenovo announced a laptop today that experiments with a new way to offer laptop users more screen space than the typical clamshell design. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has a screen that can roll up vertically to expand from 14 inches diagonally to 16.7 inches, presenting an alternative to prior foldable-screen and dual-screen laptops. The laptop, which Lenovo says is coming out in Jun

Switch 2 leaks point to controllers that work like computer mice

Switch 2 Joy-Con images leaked

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Here at Ars, we're judicious about which of the many, many Switch 2 rumors we decide to highlight on this page. For every report on hardware power or magnetic Joy-Cons that we share, there are probably five others we see and decide are too lightly sourced, too unlikely, or just too plain obscure to spread here. But when we started hearing reports that the Switch 2's Joy-Cons could be cradled on t

Google Pixel 4a gets an unexpected update: Lower battery life

Google offers free Pixel 4a battery replacement

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The Pixel 4a , a well-regarded release in Google's line of budget-minded phones with nice cameras and decent stock software, was not supposed to get any more updates. This week, it will receive a rather uncommon one—one that intends to lower its reported battery life. The Pixel 4a, released in the summer of 2020, was discontinued at the end of 2022. It received its last official software update i

Good news, bad news: Pixel 4a getting an update, but it’s reduced battery life

Google offers free Pixel 4a battery replacement

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The Pixel 4a , a well-regarded release in Google's line of budget-minded phones with nice cameras and decent stock software, was not supposed to get any more updates. This week, it will receive a rather uncommon one—one that intends to lower its reported battery life. The Pixel 4a, released in the summer of 2020, was discontinued at the end of 2022. It received its last official software update i

Nvidia unveils $3,000 desktop AI computer for home researchers

NVIDIA launches compact AI supercomputer

•

100Ars Technica - All content / 1d

On Monday, Nvidia announced Project DIGITS , a small desktop computer aimed at researchers, data scientists, and students who want to experiment with AI models—such as chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators—at home. The $3,000 device, which contains Nvidia's new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, debuted at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. It will launch in May and can operate as a standalone PC or connec

We have a new teaser for The Last of Us S2

The Last of Us Season 2 April

•

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The second season of The Last of Us will hit HBO and Max in April. HBO released a new one-minute teaser for the second season of its post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us during CES last night, along with a release date of April 2025. Based on developer Naughty Dog's hugely popular video game franchise, S2 is set five years after the events of the first season and finds the bond beginning to fray

Tesla’s remote parking under federal scrutiny after multiple crashes

US probes 26M Tesla vehicles

•

31Ars Technica - All content / 1d

Tesla is the target of yet another federal safety probe, the fourth currently open by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation. Today's trouble concerns the automaker's "Smart Summon" and "Actually Smart Summon" features, which allow Tesla drivers to remotely control their vehicles via a smartphone app. At least in theory, that is. In practice, NHTSA sa

Sony and Honda’s EV goes on sale this year, starts at $89,900

44Ars Technica - All content / 1d

The annual Consumer Electronics Show got underway in Las Vegas this week, but Winter Storm Blair unraveled my plan to be on the ground to check things out in person. That means I still haven't had an in-person look at the Sony Honda Mobility Afeela, a new electric sedan that goes on sale in California later this year. Sony stunned everyone by first showing off an electric concept car at CES in 20

Widely used DNA sequencer still doesn’t enforce Secure Boot

Ars Technica - All content / 1d

In 2012, an industry-wide coalition of hardware and software makers adopted Secure Boot to protect Windows devices against the threat of malware that could infect the BIOS and, later, its successor, the UEFI, the firmware that loaded the operating system each time a computer booted up. Firmware-dwelling malware raises the specter of malware that infects the devices before the operating system eve

Annual power ranking of US launch companies finds a shake-up at the bottom

Ars Technica - All content / 2d

Once again, we're back with our annual power ranking of US launch companies. 2024 was the third year Ars compiled a list of the most accomplished rocket companies in the United States with the goal of sparking debate, discussion, and appreciation for the challenge of operating a